-iinterface
Capture traffic on the specified network interface. This is the only mandatory commandline
argument.
-rfile
Instead of capturing live traffic, read it from a pcap(3) capture file. This is only useful for
development and benchmarking. The -r and -i arguments are mutually exclusive.
--snaplenbytes
How many bytes to capture from the start of each packet. You should not need to specify this;
darkstat will calculate it automatically.
--pppoe
Don't use this.
Instead, capture on the tunnel interface that your PPPoE software provides, for example tun0 on
FreeBSD, pppoe0 on OpenBSD or NetBSD.
If you really must, you can capture on an Ethernet interface and pass this argument to have
darkstat decode PPPoE frames and ignore everything else. Make sure you also specify your local
address with the -l argument!
--syslog
Errors, warnings, and verbose messages will go to syslog (facility daemon, priority debug) instead
of stderr.
On some systems, these messages end up in /var/log/debug by default.
--verbose
Produce more verbose debugging messages.
--no-daemon
Do not detach from the controlling terminal; stay in the foreground.
--no-promisc
Do not use promiscuous mode to capture. Note that an interface may already be in promiscuous
mode, or may later enter promiscuous mode, due to circumstances beyond darkstat's control. If
this is a problem, use -f to specify an appropriate bpf(4) filter.
--no-dns
Do not resolve IPs to host names. This can significantly reduce memory footprint on small systems
as an extra process is created for DNS resolution.
--no-macs
Do not display MAC addresses in the hosts table.
--no-lastseen
Do not display the last seen time in the hosts table.
-pport
Bind the web interface to the specified port. The default is 667.
-bbindaddr
Bind the web interface to the specified address. The default is to listen on all interfaces.
--basepath
Specify the path of the base URL. This can be useful if darkstat is accessed via a reverse proxy.
For example, if you use Apache's mod_proxy and want to avoid a complicated setup with
mod_proxy_html (and mod_header to unset the Accept-Encoding header), just set the base path to
something like stats and use a config similar to the following snippet:
ProxyPass /stats/ http://localhost:667/stats/
ProxyPassReverse /stats/ http://localhost:667/stats/
The default is / (i.e. the root).
-ffilter
Use the specified filter expression when capturing traffic. The filter syntax is beyond the scope
of this manual page; please refer to the tcpdump(8) documentation.
-lnetwork/netmask
Define a "local network" according to the network and netmask addresses. All traffic entering or
leaving this network will be graphed, as opposed to the default behaviour of only graphing traffic
to and from the local host.
The rule is that if ip_addr&netmask==network, then that address is considered local. See the
usage example below.
--local-only
Make the web interface only display hosts on the "local network." This is intended to be used
together with the -l argument.
--chrootdir
Force darkstat to chroot() into the specified directory. Without this argument, a default
directory will be used, which is determined at build time. Usually /var/empty or /var/lib/empty.
For security reasons, this directory should be empty, and the user that darkstat is running as
should not have write access to it.
However, if you wish to use --daylog or --export, darkstat will need write access to the chroot.
If you are uncomfortable with the security implications, don't use any functionality that requires
write access.
--userusername
Force darkstat to drop privileges to the uid and gid of the specified user. Without this
argument, a default value will be used, which is set at build time. Usually nobody.
For security reasons, this should not be root.
--daylogfilename
Log daily traffic statistics into the named file, relative to the chroot directory. If you wish
to use --daylog, you must first specify a --chroot directory, and it must be writeable by the
darkstat user. A writeable chroot has security implications; if you are uncomfortable with this,
do not use the --daylog functionality.
If the daylog argument is not specified, no logging is performed.
The daylog format is:
localtime|time_t|bytes_in|bytes_out|pkts_in|pkts_outs
Lines starting with a # are comments stating when logging started and stopped.
--importfilename
Upon starting, import a darkstat database from the named file, relative to the chroot directory.
If you wish to use --import, you must first specify a --chroot directory. If the import is
unsuccessful, darkstat will start with an empty database.
--exportfilename
On shutdown, or upon receiving SIGUSR1 or SIGUSR2, export the in-memory database to the named
file, relative to the chroot directory. If you wish to use --export, you must first specify a
--chroot directory, and it must be writeable by the darkstat user. A writeable chroot has
security implications - if you are uncomfortable with this, do not use the --export functionality.
--pidfilefilename
Creates a file containing the process ID of darkstat. This file will be unlinked upon clean
shutdown. As with all pidfiles, if darkstat dies uncleanly, a stale pidfile can be left over.
For example, start darkstat with:
darkstat -i fxp0 --chroot /var/run/darkstat --pidfile darkstat.pid
And stop with:
kill `cat /var/run/darkstat/darkstat.pid`
By default, kill(1) will send SIGTERM, which will cause darkstat to shut down cleanly.
--hosts-maxcount
The maximum number of hosts that will be kept in the hosts table. This is used to limit how much
accounting data will be kept in memory. The number of --hosts-max must be greater than
--hosts-keep--hosts-keepcount
When the hosts table hits --hosts-max and traffic is seen from a new host, we clean out the hosts
table, keeping only the top --hosts-keep number of hosts, sorted by total traffic.
--ports-maxcount
The maximum number of ports that will be tracked for each host. This is used to limit how much
accounting data will be kept in memory. The number of --ports-max must be greater than
--ports-keep--ports-keepcount
When a ports table fills up, this many ports are kept and the rest are discarded.
--highest-portport
Ports that are numerically higher than this will not appear in the per-host ports tables, although
their traffic will still be accounted for. This can be used to hide ephemeral ports. By default,
all ports are tracked.
--waitsecs
Don't use this. It's a hack to help victims of NetworkManager and similar systems.
You should start darkstat after the capture interface has come up. If you can't, specifying the
--wait option will make darkstat sleep up to the specified number of seconds for the interface to
become ready. Zero means wait indefinitely.
--hexdump
Show hex dumps of received traffic. This is only for debugging, and implies --verbose and
--no-daemon.
Install Now
PNG Icons
