Hi All,
I've sat down and written up some Traffic Accounting
Software for some of my
clients. This part of it is the Web Front End that
they see. I thought this
would be
of interest to some of you.
If
you prefer to see a working (sane chrooted) example, click through to:
http://www.worldguard.com.au/cgi-bin/ipaccHere
is an except from my README file:
-
ipacc
-----
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1.
What is
it?
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This
piece of software has been designed to run with my Traffic Account
Module
written for ULOGd. Therefore I shall start off by giving a quote
from its
documentation: -
As part of my UAS software suite (Users Aren't
Stupid), I have a Traffic
Accounting module for use with Harald
Welte's ulog netfilter target.
(
http://www.gnumonks.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/ulog).
I've been looking for
a decent 2.4 Kernel traffic accounting module
for a while and gave up and
wrote my own.
This module
has one fairly interesting feature. Most networks that I
administrate
are generally quite dynamic. That is, all the workstations
on it are
assigned their network details and IP Address via DHCP. As some
of my
clients wished to have accounting down to the workstation detail,
I've
made this particular module use a mixture of the IP and MAC. This
means that if a workstation gets a new IP, it will still have traffic
statistics applied correctly to it. If more than one IP has the same
MAC,
as when they are behind a router, then accounting will still
work, but
will only give totals for all addresses. This means I'm
trusting the MAC
rather than the IP, and I am using two tables, one to
store MAC's and one
to store IP's, with a relationship of one MAC to
many IP's. NOTE: Both a
MAC and IP_can_ be forged, but this is a topic
for another discussion.
------8< Snip of Documentation on how it does
this ---- 8< -----------
* It would be fairly
simple to write a web front-end that parses
the file and links MAC to machine names.
ipacc is essentially the 'web
front-end' that parses in the logfile and
gives a user friendly report.
There's not terribly much more to comment
on it, apart from the fact that its
taken hours of work and I'm very
pleased to FINALLY finish
it.
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2.
How do I Compile
it?
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Hopefully
this is fairly simple. I'll just give some step-by-step
instructions:
-
1. Uncompressed archive to some directory.
2. Copy
examples/ipacc.conf to /etc, and modify it.
3. Ensure ipaccount.log
exists. Touch it if not. Did I mention that you
should also have
already set up my ulogd_ACCOUNT module?
4. Create a new group 'ipacc' and
add the user the webserver runs under
to it. On my system I
added the following entry to my
/etc/group
ipacc:x:22:httpd
5. Set relevant modes on the config file and logfile
dir. On mine I went: -
chown
root.root /etc/ipacc.conf && chmod
u=rw,g=r,o=r
/etc/ipacc.conf
chown root.ipacc /var/log/ipacc && chmod
u=rwx,g=rx,o=
/var/log/ipacc
chown root.root /var/log/ipacc/* && chmod 644 /var/log/ipacc/*
6.
Compile it. Should be as simple as going 'make' in the directory.
7. Copy
the binary 'ipacc' to your cgi-bin directory. On my system it
was /usr/shared/httpd/cgi-bin, and make sure the webserver has
perms
to run it. ie:
-
install -o root -g ipacc -m 750
ipacc /usr/shared/httpd/cgi-bin
8. Copy the icons directory to your
webserver icons directory, or set up
your
web server such
that
http://localhost/icons/ipacc/blah.jpg
will read
the picture. Make sure permissions are correctly
set.
Done!
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3.
ipacc.conf
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The
config file is fairly simple (I hope). It is based around having groups
of
options. For instance, if a company has 20 computers, and those 20
computers
belong to 3 departments, it would make sense to create three
groups, and
stick the relevant computers into their relevant group. That
way each
department can pay for their internet usage.
There is also one 'special'
group called 'GLOBAL'. This simply holds a few
global variables for use in
configuring the software. It can also hold
'default' values for some
variables.
A typical options file will look like:
-
group GLOBAL
{
# Comment - Global Options set
here
}
group R&D
{
# Custom group called
R&D
host 00:43:21:59:22:0d
"Hawk Eye"
host 00:43:21:59:0d:16
"Eagle Eye"
}
group OTHER
{
# I like to put unknowns in
their own group
accept_unknown
1
}
A list of all the current variables are as
follows. A [G] means it can be
set in the GLOBAL group. A [C] means it can be
set in a custom group.
accept_unknown [C]
Someone brings in their
notebook from home and plugs in. They will
register as an unknown MAC
address. Who should account for this
traffic? This option sets a group to
'accept' unknown MAC address
traffic.
Values can be 0 or
1
cost_per_meg [C][G]
When enabling cost estimation, this option
specifies how much each
meg over and beyond 'initial_traffic' costs.
Value
is a float/real.
cosT_per_month [C][G]
When enabling cost estimation,
this option specifies how much per
month you have to pay minimum.
Value is
a float/real
estimate_cost [G]
Use this option to enable cost
estimation. The software will try to
work out how much you are paying for
bandwith. It uses the highest
of upload or download.
Value can be 0 or
1
host [C]
This gives a MAC address a name. Whenever the MAC address
is seen in
the logs, it will now be assigned to this group, and given a
more
friendly name.
Value is of the form:
MACADDRESS FRIENDLYNAME
ipaccountlog [G]
Where can the ipaccount log
be found.
Value is a string
initial_traffic [C][G]
When cost
estimation is enabled, what initial traffic do you get
before you have to
start paying per megabyte.
keepstats_days [G]
NOT USED YET - This
field will specify how long to keep statistics in
the 'watermark' files. This
way you can rotate and delete the larger
uLOG file without losing
history.
keepstats_size [G]
NOT USED YET - This field will specify the
maxium size the 'watermark'
file can be. This was you can rotate and delete
the larger ULOG file
without losing history.
percent_total [G]
When
enabled, certain columns will appear on some reports showing the
percentage
bandwith used of the TOTAL bandwith for that month by
a group(s)/computer.
This way, if it says 'R&D' is using 35% of the
bandwith, they can pay for
35% of the total cost. Use this rather than
relying on Cost Estimation to be
totally
accurate.
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4.
What is
'Automatic'
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Before
I forget I'll just explain Automatic (Found on the report).
I've actually
written an IP account report before for clients of mine.
It was based on
ipchains and used the 'counter' for a chain. It was a huge
big ugly hack but
it worked, and I loathed every character of it.
When I updated to my much
nicer cleaner interface, I found that my new
interface just didn't feel as
inuitive. Sometimes I want to sort by
Computer, and sometime by date. So I
created an 'Automatic' sort that
emulates my old interface's method of
sorting. It uses the following rules:
- No Month or Group
Selected
- Show by Date
- A month selected, but
no Group/Computer
- Show by Group (for that
month)
- No month selected, but a group/computer
selected
- Show by date (for that
group/computer)
- Both a month and group selected
- Show by Group (A list of Computers in the group, for that Month)
This
was a nice clean hack
:-)
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5.
TO
DO
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Not
much really. I would like to implement a 'watermark' file that stores
the
'parsed' ULOG file. This way the Ulog file can be safely deleted, and
a
date/size can be set on how long to keep old
history.
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6.
Contact/Download
Details
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My
name is Brendan Grieve. I hope someone finds some use for this software
or
can modify to their needs.
Official Download Location:
http://www.worldguard.com.au/projects/ipaccMy
Email: brendan (@) worldguard.com.au
Stay well. God
Bless!
