Install ntop3.3 onto Ubuntu linux v7 - a brief guide

So now, it seems you have Ubuntu linux working on a PC (or VirtualPC as I am doing now). The next step is to install ntop-3.3 onto it.

Why I like ntop, because I want to see what kind of network traffic my network have. And it seems a good open source tool and many people on the net have discussed about it.

Unfortunately, to install it successfully is not very simple. You might need to download 16~17 packages for it.

There are:

ntop-3.3
automake-1.6.3
autoconf-2.53
libtool-1.5.10
libpng-1.2.26
libtool-1.5.10
openssl-0.9.8g
zlib-1.2.3
rrdtool-1.2.27
freetype-2.1.10
pkg-config-0.23
libart_lgpl-2.3.20
m4-1.4.9
libpcap-0.9.8
flex-2.5.35
bison-2.3
gawk-3.1.6

All of these packages can be searched in Google. And basically you only need to do is just unpack them (except ntop), "./configure", "make", "make install" (as root).

Now you might spent 3 hours for all of these. Before you start to install ntop, you might need to edit configure.in file. Search for the rrd direction and you might have to modify it from default value.

Then you can just use "./autogen.sh", "make" then "make install" to install ntop onto your PC.

Alright, now ntop is on your system under "/user/local/var/ntop". Then you need to create a group and a user to use ntop.

# groupadd ntop

# useradd -m -s /bin/false -d /var/lib/ntop -c "ntop user" -g ntop ntop

For the first run, you need to type this command to change the password for administrator:

# ntop -A

now, you can start ntop:

# ntop -p /var/lib/ntop -u ntop

To check if it is running, you can type "http://localhost:3000" in to web browser.