chrony-stats

Lightweight : Monitoring Chrony and Network

Bash script designed to monitor network traffic and Chrony statistics, generating visual graphs and an HTML report for easy monitoring. It’s lightweight, requires minimal system resources, and is ideal for low-resource servers

Demo here : https://thehuman00.github.io/demo-chrony-stats.github.io/

Features

• HTML report: Creates a styled HTML page with embedded graphs and raw chronyc command outputs.
• Network monitoring : vnStat
• Chrony statistics
• Lightweight: Designed to be resource-efficient, with minimal overhead and no heavy dependencies.

Requirements

• Dependencies:
  • vnstat + vnstati : For network traffic monitoring + graph generation.
  • chrony : For NTP statistics collection.
  • rrdtool : For creating and managing the Round-Robin Database.
  • timeout (part of coreutils) : For setting timeouts on chronyc commands.

Install dependencies (on Debian/Ubuntu-based systems):

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install vnstat vnstati rrdtool chrony coreutils

Configure vnStat: Ensure vnstat is monitoring the correct network interface (e.g., eth0): Find your interface here :

   vnstat --iflist

Replace YOUR-INTERFACE with your network interface.

   sudo vnstat -u -i YOUR-INTERFACE

If not eth0 : ⚠️ Change your network interface in Configuration

Installation

1. Download the script:

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheHuman00/chrony-stats/master/chrony-network-stats.sh -O $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh
   

2. Make the script executable:

   sudo chmod +x $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh
   

3. Test the script: Run the script manually to ensure it works:

   sudo $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh
   

   Check the output in /var/www/chrony-network-stats/index.html and/or verify logs in /var/log/chrony-network-stats.log.

🗒️ It may take up to 5 minutes for the first values to appear on the graphs 🗒️

Configuration

   sudo nano $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh

The script includes a configuration section at the top of chrony-network-stats.sh. Modify these variables as needed:

   [...]
   #### Configuration ####

   # ⚠️ IMPORTANT: Replace "eth0" with your actual interface 
   #    (e.g., ens33, enp0s3, wlan0, ...)
   INTERFACE="eth0"

   PAGE_TITLE="Network Traffic and Chrony Statistics for ${INTERFACE}"
   OUTPUT_DIR="/var/www/chrony-network-stats"
   HTML_FILENAME="index.html"

   ENABLE_LOGGING="yes"
   LOG_FILE="/var/log/chrony-network-stats.log"
   RRD_DIR="/var/lib/chrony-rrd"
   RRD_FILE="$RRD_DIR/chrony.rrd"
   WIDTH=800
   HEIGHT=300
   TIMEOUT_SECONDS=5
   #########################
   [...]

Setting up a crontab (Run every 5 minutes)

To run the script every 5 minutes with sudo privileges, configure the root crontab :

1. Add in the root crontab:

   ( sudo crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "*/5 * * * * $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh" ) | sudo crontab -
   

   This adds the script to the root crontab and schedules it to run every 5 minutes.

2. Verify Crontab: Check the crontab entry:

   sudo crontab -l
   

Usage

1. Run the Script:

   sudo $HOME/chrony-network-stats.sh
   

2. View the Output:

   • The HTML report is generated at /var/www/chrony-network-stats/index.html.
   • Open this file in a web browser or serve it via a web server (e.g., Apache or Nginx).

See here how to serve via nginx in localhost

1. Monitor Logs: Check /var/log/chrony-network-stats.log for execution details and errors.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

Built with vnstat, vnstati, rrdtool, and chrony.

• https://humdi.net/vnstat/
• https://rrdtool.org/rrdtool/index.en.html
• https://chrony-project.org/