How to set up a web-based lightweight system monitor on Linux

Last updated on September 12, 2020 by Kristophorus Hadiono

Sometimes we, as a normal user or a system admin, need to know how well our system is running. Many questions related to system status can be answered by checking log files generated by active services. However, inspecting every bit of log files is not easy even for seasoned system admins. That is why they rely on monitoring software which is capable of gathering information from different sources, and reporting analysis result in easy to understand formats, such as graphs, visualization, statistics, etc.

There are many sophisticated monitoring system software such as Cacti, Nagios, Zabbix, Munin, etc. In this article, we pick a lightweight monitoring tool called Monitorix, which is designed to monitor system resources and many well-known third-party applications on Linux/BSD servers. Optimized to run on resource-limited embedded systems such as Raspberry Pi, Monitorix boasts of simplicity and small memory footprint. It comes with a built-in HTTP server for web-based interface, and stores time series statistics with RRDtool which is easy to combine with any scripting language such as Perl, Python, shell script, Ruby, etc.

Main Features

Here is a list of Monitorix's main features. For a complete list, refer to the official site.

System load and system service demand
CPU/GPU temperature sensors
Disk temperature and health
Network/port traffic and netstat statistics
Mail statistics
Web server statistics (Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd)
MySQL load and statistics
Squid proxy statistics
NFS server/client statistics
Raspberry Pi sensor statistics
Memcached statistics

Install and Configure Monitorix on Fedora, CentOS or RHEL

First, install required packages as follows. Note that on CentOS, you need to set up EPEL and Repoforge repositories first.

$ sudo yum install rrdtool rrdtool-perl perl-libwww-perl perl-MailTools perl-MIME-Lite perl-CGI perl-DBI perl-XML-Simple perl-Config-General perl-HTTP-Server-Simple perl-IO-Socket-SSL

After this, Monitorix can be installed with this command:

$ sudo yum install monitorix

To configure Monitorix, open the configuration file in /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf, and change the options. The details on Monitorix configuration file can be found at http://www.monitorix.org/documentation.html

By default, the built-in HTTP server listens on port 8080. Thus, make sure that your firewall does not block TCP port 8080.

To start Monitorix, simply type the following.

$ sudo systemctl start monitorix

Start your favorite web browser, and then go to http://<host-ip-address>:8080/monitorix to access Monitorix's web interface.

Install and Configure Monitorix on Arch Linux

On Arch Linux, the Monitorix package can be downloaded from AUR.

By default, the built-in HTTP server is disabled on Arch Linux. To enable built-in HTTP server, edit <httpd_builtin> section in /etc/monitorix.conf as follows.

<httpd_builtin>
        enabled = y
        host =
        port = 8080
        user = nobody
        group = nobody
        log_file = /var/log/monitorix-httpd
        hosts_deny =
        hosts_allow =
        <auth>
               enabled = n
                msg = Monitorix: Restricted access
                htpasswd = /var/lib/monitorix/htpasswd
        </auth>
</httpd_builtin>

Finally, start Monitorix service.

Open your favorite web browser, and go to http://<host-ip-address>:8080/monitorix to access Monitorix.

Install and Configure Monitorix on Debian and Ubuntu

For Debian family, Monitorix can be installed in two ways: manually or through a third party repository.

Manual Installation (for Debian)

Install all dependent packages first.

$ sudo apt-get install rrdtool perl libwww-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-lite-perl librrds-perl libdbi-perl libxml-simple-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libconfig-general-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl

Download Monitorix package from the official source and install it.

$ sudo dpkg -i monitorix*.deb

During installation, you might be asked to configure a backend web server. If you using Apache, make sure to reload Apache configuration by restarting Apache service.

$ sudo service apache2 reload

Installation Through Repositories (for Ubuntu)

Enable Izzysoft repository by appending the following line in /etc/apt/source.list.

deb http://apt.izzysoft.de/ubuntu generic universe

Download and add a GPG key for the repository.

$ wget http://apt.izzysoft.de/izzysoft.asc
$ sudo apt-key add izzysoft.asc

Install Monitorix with apt-get. All its dependent packages will automatically be installed as well.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install monitorix

Finally, start Monitorix service.

$ sudo service monitorix start

To configure Monitorix, edit /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf with a text editor, and restart Monitorix service.

$ sudo service monitorix restart

The built-in web server of Monitorix for Ubuntu is enabled by default. To access web-based monitoring result, go to http://<host-ip-address>8080/monitorix on your favorite web browser.

Install and Configure Monitorix on Raspberry Pi

If you want to install Monitorix on Raspberry Pi (which is Debian-based), you cannot use the Izzysoft repository mentioned above because it does not provide an ARM port of Monitorix. Instead, follow Debian-based manual installation as follows.

First, install required packages.

$ sudo apt-get install rrdtool perl libwww-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-lite-perl librrds-perl libdbi-perl libxml-simple-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libconfig-general-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl

If some of the required packages are not be installed, we need to force install with this command.

$ sudo apt-get -f install

Download Monitorix package (monitorix_x.x.x-izzy1_all.deb) from the official source.

Install Monitorix package with the command below.

$ sudo dpkg -i monitorix_x.x.x-izzy1_all.deb

After installation is finished, we need to change a small thing in Monitorix configuration as follows.

Open /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf with your favorite text editor. Scroll down until you find <graphs enable>. Search for raspberrypi = n, and replace n with y. This will enable monitoring of Raspberry Pi clock frequency, temperatures and voltages.

After editing is done, restart Monitorix service.

$ sudo service monitorix restart

By default, Monitorix's built-in HTTP web server is enabled. To access Monitorix's web interface, go to http://<raspberrypi-ip-address>:8080/monitorix

Monitorix Screenshots (on Raspberry Pi)

Monitorix home screen:

System load average and usage in graph option:

Active process graph option:

Choose Clock Frequency under Raspberry Pi section in the home screen, and you will see clock frequency, temperature, and voltage graphs for Raspberry Pi.

All monitoring graphs:

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