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Monitor Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Wheezy Servers with Linux-Dash
This document describes how to install and configure Linux-dash in Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Wheezy for monitoring server performances easily. Linux-dash is a low-overhead monitoring web dashboard for a GNU/Linux machine. Simply drop-in the app and go! Linux-dash is a memory efficient, low resource, easy to install, server statistics monitoring script written in PHP. The web statistics page allows you to drag and drop the various widgets and rearrange the display as you desire. The script displays live statistics of your server, including RAM, CPU, Disk Space, Network Information, Installed Software’s, Running Processes and much more. The main advantage of Linux-dash is that it works on real-time basis.
1 Preliminary Note
This tutorial is based on Ubuntu 14.04 server, so you should set up a basic Ubuntu 14.04 server and Debian 7 server installation before you continue with this tutorial. Your system could have static or dynamic IP. In my case I am using static IP address. I use 192.168.0.100 as my IP address in this tutorial and server1.example.com as the hostname.
2 Installation in Ubuntu and Debian server
Before linux-dash installation we require some per-configuration. We can use Linux-dash with either Apache or NGINX. In my case I will be using Apache:
apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils
linux-dash is created in PHP so we requires PHP and php-json extension installed, I will install it as follows:
apt-get install php5 curl php5-curl php5-json
We also require git package, it will be installed as follows:
apt-get install git
Now start the Apache service:
service apache2 start
2.1 Installation in Ubuntu 14.04
Now we will download the Linux-dash in Ubuntu 14.04 server in its Apache document root as follows:
cd /var/www/html git clone https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash.git
Now we are ready for the dashboard, open a browser of your choice and open the URL http://192.168.0.100/linux-dash:
It will show us the general information about the Ubuntu Server.
General Info:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
Further we can check other information like Disk usage, CPU usage, RAM usage, users' information and network usage as follows:
Disk:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
CPU:
(JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
RAM:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
Users:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
Network:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
2.2 Installation in Debian Wheezy
Now we will download the Linux-dash in Debian Wheezy server in its Apache document root as follows:
cd /var/www git clone https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash.git
We can access Linux-dash on the URL http://192.168.0.100/linux-dash:
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
We can check all the parameters as in case of Ubuntu for Debian as well.
3 Secured Linux-dash access
Now we want to access the Linux-dash within a secured environment, i.e. I want that Linux-dash must be password protected. For that we will proceed like that:
htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/.htpasswd admin
root@server1:~# htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/.htpasswd admin New password: <--howtoforge Re-type new password: <--howtoforge Adding password for user admin root@server1:~#
I am using my password as howtoforge or you can use any password of your choice.
3.1 In Ubuntu 14.04
Now create a .htaccess file in the Linux-dash document-root directory and add the following content to it:
touch /var/www/html/linux-dash/.htaccess vi /var/www/html/linux-dash/.htaccess
And give the entries as:
AuthType Basic AuthName "Restricted Files" AuthBasicProvider file AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd Require valid-user
Now we will change the Apache2 configuration file of the Ubuntu 14.04 Server as :
vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
And give the entries at the end of the file as:
[...] <Directory /var/www/html/linux-dash> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride Authconfig Require all granted </Directory>
Finally restart the service of Apache and you are done.
service apache2 restart
Now while accessing the Linux-dash URL http://192.168.0.100 we will be prompted for the password.
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
3.2 In Debian Wheezy Server
Now create a .htaccess file in the Linux-dash document-root directory and add the following content to it:
touch /var/www/linux-dash/.htaccess vi /var/www/linux-dash/.htaccess
And give the entries as:
AuthName "Restricted" AuthType Basic AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null require valid-user
Now we will change the Apache2 configuration file of the Ubuntu 14.04 Server as :
vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
And give the entries at the end of the file as:
[...] <Directory /var/www/html/linux-dash> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride Authconfig Require all granted </Directory>
Finally restart the service of Apache and you are done.
service apache2 restart
Now while accessing the Linux-dash URL http://192.168.0.100 we will be prompted for the password.
 (JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to view the large image as an image overlay.)
Congratulations! We have successfully installed Linux-dash tool in Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Wheezy for monitoring purpose
