Installing iStat server on Debian / Ubuntu

24 Oct 2009

Bjango iStat for iPhone is a fantastic app for keeping an eye on a Mac server and thanks to the work William Tisater, can monitor Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris servers as well. The Linux server monitor doesn't yet have the fan and temperature features available for Macs but since my server's running in a cloud, this isn't important.

I installed iStat server on Pukupi running Debian 5.0 (lenny) but these instructions should work with other Debian and Ubuntu distros:

Preparation

If you're a good sys admin and have locked down all unused server ports, open up port 5109 in iptables if planning on using the default iStat port. You'll also need to install build tools if you haven't done this already:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Download iStat server

iStat server for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris is maintained at github and you should pop over there to make sure the latest version corresponds with the wget command below:

wget http://github.com/downloads/tiwilliam/istatd/istatd-0.5.5.tar.gz
tar -zxvf istatd-*.tar.gz
cd istatd-*

Setup iStat server

Configure iStat for your server:

./configure

If, like me, you get an xml2-config error, install libxml2-dev and run ./configure again:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
./configure

Compile and install:

make
sudo make install

Add an istat user and create a directory to store istat.pid:

sudo useradd istat
sudo mkdir /var/run/istat
sudo chown istat /var/run/istat

Tweak the iStat server configuration

Before launching the iStat server, first modify the configuration file for your system:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/istat.conf

Modify the server_code and anything else to match your system. In my case I also modified monitor_disk and set the disk_rename_label:

#
# /etc/istat.conf: Configuration for iStat server
#

# network_addr           127.0.0.1
# network_port           5109
server_code              12345
# server_user            istat
# server_group           istat
# server_socket          /tmp/istatd.sock
# server_pid             /var/run/istat/istatd.pid
# cache_dir              /var/cache/istat

# Note: Only support for one network interface, limited by client.
monitor_net              ( eth0 )

# Array of disks to monitor. Specify mount path or device name.
# monitor_disk             ( / /home )
monitor_disk             ( / )

# Set to 1 if you want to use mount path as label instead of the device name.
disk_mount_path_label    0

# Try to probe the filesystem for disk label, will override the mount path label.
disk_filesystem_label    1

# Set custom disk label. Will override all other labels.
# disk_rename_label        /dev/sda1  "root"
disk_rename_label        /dev/sda1  "Kyle's Server"
# disk_rename_label        /home      "home"

# End of file

Launch iStat server

With the configuration saved, iStat server is ready to launch:

sudo /usr/local/bin/istatd -d

Add your server to iStat for iPhone using the server_code in the iStat server configuration file and start enjoying Bjangolicous server stats.

iStat server running on Pukupi

Launch iStat server at startup

It's not a bad idea to create a wee script to launch iStat server at startup:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/istatlauncher

The following basic istatlauncher script should do the the trick:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/local/bin/istatd -d

Make the script executable then add it to the system start up items:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/istatlauncher
sudo update-rc.d istatlauncher defaults

You may want to restart your server to confirm iStat server launched OK. If you run into any problems, let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can do.