Linux Web Dashboard : linux-dash

Wednesday, June 03, 2015 Sensei Fedon 0 Comments

Linux Web Dashboard linux-dash is a low-overhead monitoring web dashboard for a GNU/Linux machine

Linux Dash is an open-source dashboard to monitor Linux servers. It prides itself on its simplicity and ease of use. It can be very handy to have a high-level dashboard for a server instance. With a wide array of modules for server statistics, it also serves as a great visual debugging tool.

Linux Web Dashboard Features

A beautiful, simple web-based dashboard for monitoring a linux server
Only ~1MB on disk! (.git removed)
Live graphs, refresh-able widgets, and a growing # of supported modules
Drop-in installation for PHP (Apache, NGINX), Node.js, and Go

Support

OS
- Arch
- Debian 6,7
- Ubuntu 11.04+
- Linux Mint 16+
- CentOS 5, 6
Backend
- Node.js
- Go
- PHP 5

Prequisites

Please complete these prerequisites.

Add a sudo user
Install Apache and PHP. Please note that MySQL is not required for Linux Dash
Install Git if you plan to use the Git installation method
```
sudo apt-get install git
```

Installing Linux Dash

The following steps will install Linux Dash on your server.

Navigate to the web root directory.

cd /var/www/html/

Use Git to download Linux Dash.

sudo git clone https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash.git

Make sure shell_exec is enabled. If this is a fresh Apache installation, it should be already.

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Locate the disable_functions line and make sure shell_exec and exec are not listed.

At this point, you should be able to visit http://your_server_ip/linux-dash and see the dashboard.

Linux Web Dashboard linuxdash Linux Web Dashboard Linux Web Dashboard

Password-Protecting the Dashboard

Linux Dash gives web access to private and sensitive information about your server. It is strongly suggested that you restrict access to this directory.

Open your Apache virtual hosts file for editing:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Add a new Directory block for the linux-dash directory. This can be anywhere within the<VirtualHost *:80> block:

<Directory /var/www/html/linux-dash>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
</Directory>

This enables the use of a .htaccess file. Now, create the .htaccess file in the Linux Dash directory:

sudo nano /var/www/html/linux-dash/.htaccess

Enable basic password authentication for this directory, and designate the password file:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Files"
AuthUserFile /var/www/html/linux-dash/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

Create the password file with your chosen username and password.

sudo htpasswd -c /var/www/html/linux-dash/.htpasswd sammy

Enter your new password at the prompts:

New password: 
Re-type new password: 
Adding password for user sammy

Finally, restart Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

If you refresh the page at http://your_server_ip/linux-dash, you should now be prompted for your credentials. Enter the ones you created in the previous step.

You should be able to see the Linux Dash application.

Using Linux Dash

Linux Dash gives you a bird’s-eye view of your server.

There are five sections to Linux Dash in the menu near the top of the page. Each section contains an ever-growing number of modules which display information about the server. Some modules are simple readouts of common commands and files on your server, while others are detailed tables and charts.

You can also filter the information inside a module using the search bar.