I have two computers on a local network. One running Gentoo Linux, the other running Windows 7. I'm looking for a program to run on the Gentoo box that can remotely monitor the resources of the Windows 7 computer. The main information I'm looking for is CPU usage and memory usage in a fashion similar to htop; and bandwidth usage in a fashion similar to iftop. If this wasn't Windows, I could obviously ssh in and run htop and iftop, but I can't, so is there an application that can do something similar for me?

Thanks in advance!

Probably VNC is your best bet to monitoring your win7 machine, since there isn't much cli for it anymore, things like 'mem' are long gone and everything is under GUI like taskmgr.exe or resmon.exe.

Regards

Does VNC have the capability to do this without actually bringing up the remote desktop?

I'm afraid not because the lack of cli programs on win7 for monitoring, you'll need VNC server on you win7 machine and a viewer on your GNU/Linux side, it is also possible connect to the server through a web browser.

Regards

Hi,

this is only an idea, not a solution:
As most administrative applications on windows use RPC, it might be possible to get a system monitor running through wine and connecting it to the monitored PC.

Find some kind of software as discussed here. ProcessExplorer works on wine, but doesn't allow remote monitoring.
As last resort, the "net" and "rpcclient" commands might prove to be useful (I suppose they're a part of the samba package).

Serafean

snmp can do this.
http://www.debianadmin.com/linux-snm...tatistics.html

The presentation of collected metric data can be handled in a variety of ways. rrdtool is the usual mechanism for displaying collected data, but that is bulky and cumbersome, IMO.

I would NOT want to create graphs with snmp data and rrdtool alone. Enter Cacti.
It utilizes snmp and rrdtool to present data in a pretty good manner. YMMV. I use zabbix myself b/c it has features that allow me to save time making hosts to monitor, or services|triggers to replicate.

This requirement may necessitate some flexibility on your behalf. Zabbix can do this handily and doesn't use rrdtool at all. So it grows a mysql database instead.

So you could install the zabbix client on the Windows host and monitor it from the Gentoo host that has the zabbix-server software installed (a LAMP install) easily, or use snmp collected data and roll-your-own parse for the desired metrics.

You could install the Zabbix client on the target and use the zabbix-server tools on the command-line to grab the CPU and Mem via the c-li and have at it.

You have options.

Easiest monitoring tool is Zabbix, IMO.
Good luck.

1 members found this post helpful.

Habitual, thanks for your reply.

Zabbix seems like the best solution for what I'm trying to do here. As you say, I decided to become more flexible in my requirements. I decided the graph doesn't necessarily have to be CLI. That said, I was wondering the default way to connect to a Zabbix server to view the resource usage of the different agent computers. The documentation is a bit confusing in this regard, so I must be missing something. In the 2.2/manual/quickstart/login section of the manual they suddenly start talking about a login screen. I can't find anywhere in the manual where it says how to access this login screen. Could you give me another nudge in the right direction?

Thanks for your help in getting me this far!

No problem!

OS|version of the zabbix server|host?
How did you install the zabbix server on the server?
Zabbix version?

subscribed with interest,

JJ

Since Xabbix required MySQL, I decided to put the server on one of my machines already running it to save system resources. I put Zabbix server on my Ubuntu server installation. The agent will be run on my Windows 7 64-bit computer and probably my previously mentioned Gentoo computer. On the Ubuntu server, I installed via aptitude install zabbix-server-mysql. According to their package website, I'm running version 1.8.11-1. On the Windows computer, I just downloaded the Windows agent from the download page. The version should be 2.0.3. I have not yet gotten to playing around with the agent on the Gentoo computer, however I did install it by running emerge net-analyzer/zabbix. According to their repository, I have version 1.8.15.

I realize I have some old versions. Is that going to be a problem?

You should then be able to navigate to http://ubuntu.ip/zabbix

Version isn't an issue, "normally"
<gratuitous 'YMMV' here>

Windows Notes:
The Windows zabbix_agentd.conf can be a bit tricky because you should not open, or edit it with notepad, EVER.
Edit that file using PFE32 (it's free) from here.... It will preserve the unix-format of the file in Windows nicely.

The most important key/values in the zabbixd.conf on the Windows host are:

• Server=
  • This is the IP of the zabbix_server
• Hostname=
  • This has to be the same string that will be used to identify the Windows host
    in the zabbix_server's Host configuration.
• EnableRemoteCommands=1

All the rest should be fine as default or commented out.
Please remember to restart the Zabbix Agent in "services" after making any changes to zabbixd_agent.conf

• Verify Zabbix Agent in
  File > run > "services.msc" w\out the quotes.
  The zabbix-agent install should have installed it and started it, but best to verify.

Zabbix Server Notes:
The install should have installed a zabbix client on that same host
(see /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf)

• this is known as the "Zabbix server" in the hosts configuration page in /zabbix
  This is where you would configure target hosts (the Windows box).

Please let me know how this goes.

JJ

Nope, gives me a Not Found error.

EDIT: I was able to get to a web-based interface after I moved the frontends/php directory from the Zabbix source archive to /var/www/.

I already know of the incompatibility between Unix and Windows text files. I prefer to use either Notepad++ or vim.

I'll make all the configuration changes you mentioned. I will add you on Skype as soon as I get around to reinstalling it. Thanks!

So far so good until I get to the part where I configure target hosts.

The package I installed did not give me an /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf. Am I supposed to create it myself or am I supposed to install the zabbix-agent package on the server?

You do not have to create one, but you may have to install the client on the server as well.
What's in /etc/zabbix/ ? This will tell me what's what.
(That's a One)
It may be zabbix_agent.conf. The "d" designation in zabbix_agentd.conf is for daemon mode (versus xinetd) so we may be looking for /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent.conf instead.

Are you able to login to /zabbix? Sounds like it. If you are, what is "there" for Hosts? This will tell us if you need to install additional software for the "Zabbix Server" that should be present in Hosts.

Please let me know...

When I look under Inventory -> Hosts, I have nothing listed. (See attached screenshot).

Attached Thumbnails

 

No worries. We'll skip the localhost for now.
It's not imperative, if you feel adventurous, you could install zabbix_agent on the Zabbix Server.

Now add a new host ("Create Host" button at /zabbix/hosts.php, see attached) and we'll go basic, so no Template, or Macro, or Profile, or Extended host profile needed at this time.
But I believe you are required to add the newly created host(s) to at least One Hostgroup. You can pick one or make one "on-the-fly" using "New host group" in the action after "Create Host"

Once the host is added, check back under /zabbix/hosts.php, and you should now "see" the Windows Host.

Please let me know...