Install package to root freenas, not a jail (9.2.0)

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

I'd like to monitor the network activity on my server, see what hosts are connecting (and how) and using up how much bandwidth. The easiest way for this would be the simple package 'iotop' but this isn't on the root FreenNAS install. Installing it in a jail is simple enough, but it will only show that jail's network flow, not the entire hosts.

I've looked for a few days now on and off, reading through many topics, but haven't seen much concrete on packages outside of a jail.

Does anyone have any information or resources off hand on how to do this?

 

[cyberjock]

Adding packages to FreeNAS is not supported by iX or this forum. FreeNAS is an appliance-based OS. It's not supported(and soon won't even be technically possible). ;)

There's other limitations though, as there's like a whopping 5MB of free space on the FreeNAS install media, and if you fill that you can expect FreeNAS to misbehave. And that will make you very angry.

In short, don't do it, don't try to do it, and don't expect anyone here to give recommendations on how you might even try. Its one of those taboos with using FreeNAS.

 

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

Heh, well ok then. Let me change my attack on my problem then.
Would it be possible for a package in a jail, to see the host and it's networking?
Once again, to basically run iftop to see which end client is using my freenas box via what protocol at any one time.

 

[cyberjock]

Not that I can think of. :(

You could run various commands from the CLI to see the connections and stuff, but that's about the best I can think of.

 

[xcom]

Heh, well ok then. Let me change my attack on my problem then.
Would it be possible for a package in a jail, to see the host and it's networking?
Once again, to basically run iftop to see which end client is using my freenas box via what protocol at any one time.

From within your FreeNAS you can use some thing like netstat...

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/03/netstat-command-examples/

 

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

Netstat was the first program I tried, but moved on from. Unfortunetly a large number of switches don't work. :(

 

[cyberjock]

They don't? Everything I've ever used has worked for me...

 

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

Quite a few come back with errors:
"[root@freenas] ~# netstat -pt
netstat: t: unknown or uninstrumented protocol"

 

[survive]

Hi FatBoyNotSlim,

If iotop is really simple (like single executable file simple) you could simply get the package file from the FreeBSD FTP site, extract it, move it to your filer and just run it. I have a couple of simple executables I have stashed in a directory on my main pool that I created expressly for such things.

-Will

 

[TheSmoker]

Systat -ifstat
Systat -vmstat

Enjoy!

 

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

Well yesterday, before posting here, I had made my system writable, and installed iftop via the packages 'pkg install iftop' IIRC, which then didn't run. When trying to find the error message to send to a friend today, it worked as expected. Computers huh, always doing weird things. So iftop combined with 'Systat -ifstat' in another window is a pretty good overview of realtime network traffic.

Thanks for all the help that everyone posted. :)

 

[cyberjock]

Yep.. someone else who will be creating threads with problems that are unexplainable... woohoo.