Linux Dash – Simple web-based server monitoring

[diwo]

It looks like a cool project and the interface pretty well done too. Good job.

Is there something particular you want to specifically mention that has happened since you last shared the app five months ago? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7125153

Anyways, as this is shared here on a developer oriented forum, it would be fitting to speak of the actual implementation too. Taking quick look at the source, it seems to have some security issues ranging from XSS to potential CE. These seem to arise from common bad practices.

I would advice going through the source code and making sure all values you echo as JSON are properly encoded and that you don't use anything as-is in a shell command.

Few examples:

- https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash/blob/7bd5dcb637f815702... - https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash/blob/7bd5dcb637f815702... - https://github.com/afaqurk/linux-dash/blob/7bd5dcb637f815702...

[afaqurk]

You are absolutely on point. I am currently cleaning up the code base and trying to instill a better directory/file structure. Since the last post, it has added more widgets, changes to existing widgets, and been put up on a new domain. Seeking feedback to help it mature a bit.

[nemothekid]

This has really come a long way since I last used it however I wish it didn't have the php dependency (not so much php, but php+apache/nginx).

IMO something self contained like a static (go) binary or another language that could host its own servers (node, java, etc) would be much better

[Rapzid]

https://github.com/ProTip/linux-go-dash

I started this fork in part to port it to go and in part to create a set of packages for getting at linux system information(for use in monitoring agents, etc). I haven't visited it in a while but it's always in the back of my mind in case anyone would like to contribute :)

[k3oni]

Here is one in Python, posted here a while back: https://github.com/k3oni/pydash and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7224710

[afaqurk]

There are actually quite a few github users who have ported the project to Go, Ruby, Python, etc. I believe there already exists a popular java based alternative.

Node would be awesome for a project like this. Especially with Gulp. If someone hasn't already built it, I would love to.

[sergiosgc]

php is ok for this type of work. Unsexy as it is, I think it's better than Java. For running a simple poller, gathering a metric, with the JVM you get one of two (poor) scenarios: either a slow starting short lived poller process, or a long lived memory hungry long lived process. Neither is acceptable for this use case.

[encoderer]

CherryPy shines in these use cases..

[josegonzalez]

PHP can indeed run it's own server via "php -S localhost:8000".

[ajaxaddicted]

Take a look at Amonone - https://github.com/martinrusev/amonone It is a lightweight monitoring tool written in Python with charts for all system(cpu,disk,network,etc) and process metrics(cpu/memory). Plus it has alerting with email/sms notifications.

[SEJeff]

Redhat is pushing their new "cockpit"[1] project very hard for their new "Project Atomic"[2] initiative.

[1] http://cockpit-project.org/ [2] http://www.projectatomic.io/

[IanChiles]

I find it rather crazy that "cockpit", an almost brand new project has its entire backend written in C. Not your typical backend language by any means...

[marcoms]

Also check out Cockpit [0] for a similar, pre-dating project.

[0] http://cockpit-project.org

[c3ntr1n0]

I been using this one -> https://github.com/abimaelmartell/system_monitor

I tried yours, but i was to buggy when i tried it, also insecure. I saw some exec($COOKIE).

Hope you improved it. I will give a second try!

[chatmasta]

Do you have plans to break apart the monitoring and reporting, so that one monitoring node could monitor the statistics of multiple servers? Something like www.scoutapp.com (proprietary) or Cacti (open source). That would be really cool. I'm growing a network of 100's of servers, and not about to pay scoutapp $10 per server... so something equivalently nice looking, but open source, would be awesome.

[afaqurk]

Absolutely. We recently created a multi-server branch for linux-dash. It just began but the goal is exactly what you stated: single, consolidated Linux-dash page for N servers with the same drop-in installation capability.

[lugg]

Awesome. Can you make it work on a mobile? I can only assume its the viewport meta tag with user-scalable=no.

The design isn't exactly setup for mobile so you may as well make it work like a real webpage.

[afaqurk]

A recent commit messed up mobile. Sucks that it happened right before I posted.

Will address it soon.

[moloch]

Not a great idea to just leave your phpinfo() out there in the open.

[lucb1e]

It reports 300KB/s upload and 5.9MB/s download speed for my server, but I'm pretty sure it's symmetrical...

[unkoman]

Is it possible to use this to send metrics to Graphite for example?

[pagekicker]

what does this offer that command line tools and status line indicators do not?

[jvoorhis]

A web GUI.