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VNSTAT.CONF(5) User Manuals VNSTAT.CONF(5) NAME vnstat.conf - vnStat configuration file SYNOPSIS /etc/vnstat.conf DESCRIPTION vnstat(1), vnstati(1) and vnstatd(8) all use the same configuration file for configuration related settings. Some of the settings are com- mon for all three programs. The file consists of keyword-argument pairs, one per line. Empty lines and lines starting with '#' or ';' are interpreted as comments and not processed. Arguments may optionally be enclosed in double quotes (") in order to represent arguments contain- ing spaces. Arguments can be padded with spaces or tabulator charac- ters. A hardcoded default value will be used if a keyword can't be found from the configuration file or if the configured value cannot be parsed or is outside supported value range. The configuration file is divided into three sections based on the us- age of each keyword. The first section contains keywords that are con- sidered common for all commands, the second section is for daemon re- lated keywords and the last section is for image output. COMMON KEYWORDS DatabaseDir Specifies the directory where the database is to be stored. A full path must be given and a leading '/' isn't required. DayFormat, MonthFormat, TopFormat Formatting of date in available outputs. Uses the same format as date(1). (vnstat and vnstati only) DefaultDecimals Number of decimals to use in outputs. Value range: 0..2 (vnstat and vnstati only) EstimateBarVisible Show a visual representation of the traffic estimation if Out- putStyle has been configured with a value of 1 or 2 to make the bar column visible. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. (vnstat only, see EstimateStyle for vnstati) EstimateText Replace default "estimated" text on the estimate line with cus- tom text. Limited to 9 characters. (vnstat and vnstati only) EstimateVisible Show a line with traffic estimation for the selected time period or alert as the last line of the output in output modes support- ing it. Disabling estimate visibility also disables estimate conditions in --alert. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. (vnstat and vnstati only) HourlyDecimals Number of decimals to use in hourly graph output. Value range: 0..2 (vnstat only) HourlySectionStyle Select what kind of spacer is used for separating the numerical sections of the hourly graph output. 0 = none, 1 = '|', 2 = '][', 3 = '[ ]'. (vnstat only) Interface Default interface used when no other interface is specified on the command line. Leave empty for automatic selection. The auto- matic selection will prioritize the interface with most traffic for outputs doing database queries. Queries not using the data- base will first check if the database is available and select the interface with most traffic out those that are currently visible in the system. If no database can be read then the first available interface will be used. (vnstat and vnstati only) InterfaceMatchMethod Method for matching interface given for a query to an interface in the database. Method 0 requires the interface name to be a case sensitive ex- act match. Method 1 extends the previous method by allowing a case sensitive exact match of the interface alias. Method 2 ex- tends the previous method by allowing a case insensitive exact match of the interface alias. Method 3 extends the previous method by allowing a case insensitive match of the beginning of the interface alias. Methods will be evaluated in the order described above resulting in exact interface matches always taking precedence. If any in- terface alias matching method results in multiple matches then the interface with the highest total traffic will be used. (vn- stat and vnstati only) InterfaceOrder Interface order in outputs with multiple interfaces. 0 = alpha- betical by name, 1 = alphabetical by alias. If 1 is selected and multiple interfaces don't have aliases then the interface name will be used for defining the order. (vnstat only) List5Mins, ListHours, ListDays, ListMonths, ListYears, ListTop Number of entries to show in list outputs unless overridden from the command line. Set to 0 to show all entries available in the database. (vnstat and vnstati) LiveSpinner Show spinning animation at the beginning of -l / --live output line. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. (vnstat only) Locale Locale setting to be used for prints. This replaces the LC_ALL environment variable. Set to "-" or leave empty in order to use the system default value. (vnstat and vnstati only) OutputStyle Modify the content and style of text outputs. 0 = minimal and narrow output for terminal with limited width, 1 = normal output with bar column visible, 2 = same as 1 except rate is visible in summary output, 3 = rate column is visible in all outputs where it is supported. (vnstat and vnstati only) QueryMode Default query mode when no parameters are given. 0 = summary, 1 = days, 2 = months, 3 = top, 4 = single summary, 5 = short, 6 = years, 7 = hours graph, 8 = xml, 9 = one line, 10 = json, 11 = hours and 12 = 5 minute. (vnstat only) RateUnit Select which unit is used when traffic rate is visible. 0 = bytes, 1 = bits. (vnstat and vnstati only) RateUnitMode Select used prefix when traffic rate is shown in bits per sec- ond. IEC binary prefixes are calculated with powers of 1024. SI decimal prefixes are calculated with powers of 1000. 0 = IEC binary prefixes (Kibit/s...), 1 = SI decimal prefixes (kbit/s...). (vnstat and vnstati only) RXCharacter, TXCharacter Character used for representing the percentual share of received and transmitted traffic in list mode outputs. (vnstat only) RXHourCharacter, TXHourCharacter Character used for representing the percentual share of received and transmitted traffic in hourly graph output. (vnstat only) Sampletime Defines how many seconds the -tr option will sample traffic. Value range: 2..600 (vnstat only) UnitMode Select how units are prefixed. IEC and JEDEC binary prefixes are calculated with powers of 1024. SI decimal prefixes are calcu- lated with powers of 1000. 0 = IEC standard prefixes (B/KiB/MiB/GiB...), 1 = old style (JEDEC) binary prefixes (B/KB/MB/GB...), 2 = SI decimals prefixes (B/kB/MB/GB...) (vn- stat and vnstati only) DAEMON RELATED KEYWORDS 5MinuteHours Data retention duration for the 5 minute resolution entries. The configuration defines for how many past hours entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. 64bitInterfaceCounters Select interface counter handling. Set to 1 for defining that all interfaces use 64-bit counters on the kernel side and 0 for defining 32-bit counter. Set to -1 for using the old style logic used in earlier versions where counter values within 32-bits are assumed to be 32-bit and anything larger is assumed to be a 64-bit counter. This may produce false results if a 64-bit counter is reset within the 32-bits. Set to -2 for using auto- matic detection based on available kernel datastructures. AlwaysAddNewInterfaces Enable or disable automatic creation of new database entries for interfaces not currently in the database even if the database file already exists when the daemon is started. New database en- tries will also get created for new interfaces seen while the daemon is running. Pseudo interfaces lo, lo0 and sit0 are always excluded from getting added. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. BandwidthDetection Try to automatically detect MaxBandwidth value for each moni- tored interface. Mostly only ethernet interfaces support this feature. MaxBandwidth will be used as fallback value if detec- tion fails. Any interface specific MaxBW configuration will dis- able the detection for the specified interface. In Linux, the detection is disabled for tun interfaces due to the Linux kernel always reporting 10 Mbit regardless of the used real interface. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. BandwidthDetectionInterval How often in minutes interface specific detection of MaxBand- width is done for detecting possible changes when BandwidthDe- tection is enabled. Can be disabled by setting to 0. Value range: 0..30 BootVariation Time in seconds how much the boot time reported by system kernel can variate between updates. Value range: 0..300 CheckDiskSpace Enable or disable the availability check of at least some free disk space before a database write. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. CreateDirs Enable or disable the creation of directories when a configured path doesn't exist. This includes DatabaseDir , LogFile and Pid- File directories. The LogFile directory will be created only when UseLogging has been set to 1. The PidFile directory will be created only if the daemon is started as a background process. The daemon process will try to create the directory using per- missions of the user used to start the process. DaemonGroup Specify the group to which the daemon process should switch dur- ing startup. The group can either be the name of the group or a numerical group id. Leave empty to disable group switching. This option can only be used when the process is started as root. DaemonUser Specify the user to which the daemon process should switch dur- ing startup. The user can either be the login of the user or a numerical user id. Leave empty to disable user switching. This option can only be used when the process is started as root. DailyDays Data retention duration for the one day resolution entries. The configuration defines for how many past days entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. DatabaseSynchronous Change the setting of the SQLite "synchronous" flag which con- trols how much care is taken to ensure disk writes have fully completed when writing data to the database before continuing other actions. Higher values take extra steps to ensure data safety at the cost of slower performance. A value of 0 will re- sult in all handling being left to the filesystem itself. Set to -1 to select the default value according to database mode con- trolled by DatabaseWriteAheadLogging setting. See SQLite docu- mentation for more details regarding values from 1 to 3. Value range: -1..3 DatabaseWriteAheadLogging Enable or disable SQLite Write-Ahead Logging mode for the data- base. See SQLite documentation for more details and note that support for read-only operations isn't available in older SQLite versions. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. HourlyDays Data retention duration for the one hour resolution entries. The configuration defines for how many past days entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. LogFile Specify log file path and name to be used if UseLogging is set to 1. MaxBandwidth Maximum bandwidth for all interfaces. If the interface specific traffic exceeds the given value then the data is assumed to be invalid and rejected. Set to 0 in order to disable the feature. Value range: 0..50000 MaxBW Same as MaxBandwidth but can be used for setting individual lim- its for selected interfaces. The name of the interface is speci- fied directly after the MaxBW keyword without spaces. For exam- ple MaxBWeth0 for eth0 and MaxBWppp0 for ppp0. BandwidthDetec- tion is disabled on an interface specific level for each MaxBW configuration. Value range: 0..50000 MonthlyMonths Data retention duration for the one month resolution entries. The configuration defines for how many past months entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. MonthRotate Day of month that months are expected to change. Usually set to 1 but can be set to alternative values for example for tracking monthly billed traffic where the billing period doesn't start on the first day. For example, if set to 7, days of February up to and including the 6th will count for January. Changing this op- tion will not cause existing data to be recalculated. Value range: 1..28 MonthRotateAffectsYears Enable or disable MonthRotate also affecting yearly data. Ap- plicable only when MonthRotate has a value greater than one. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. OfflineSaveInterval How often in minutes cached interface data is saved to file when all monitored interfaces are offline. Value range: SaveInter- val..60 PidFile Specify pid file path and name to be used. The file is created only if the daemon is started as a background process. PollInterval How often in seconds interfaces are checked for status changes. Value range: 2..60 RescanDatabaseOnSave Automatically discover added interfaces from the database and start monitoring. The rescan is done every SaveInterval or Of- flineSaveInterval minutes depending on the current activity state. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. SaveInterval How often in minutes cached interface data is saved to file. Value range: ( UpdateInterval / 60 )..60 SaveOnStatusChange Enable or disable the additional saving to file of cached inter- face data when the availability of an interface changes, i.e., when an interface goes offline or comes online. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. TimeSyncWait How many minutes to wait during daemon startup for system clock to sync if most recent database update appears to be in the fu- ture. This may be needed in systems without a real-time clock (RTC) which require some time after boot to query and set the correct time. 0 = wait disabled. Value range: 0..60 TopDayEntries Data retention duration for the top day entries. The configura- tion defines how many of the past top day entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. TrafficlessEntries Create database entries even when there is no traffic during the entry's time period. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. UpdateFileOwner Enable or disable the update of file ownership during daemon process startup. During daemon startup, only database, log and pid files will be modified if the user or group change feature ( DaemonUser or DaemonGroup ) is enabled and the files don't match the requested user or group. During manual database creation, this option will cause file ownership to be inherited from the database directory if the directory already exists. This option only has effect when the process is started as root or via sudo. UpdateInterval How often in seconds the interface data is updated. Value range: PollInterval..300 UseLogging Enable or disable logging. This option is ignored when the dae- mon is started with -n, --nodaemon which results in all log out- put being shown in terminal the daemon process is using. 0 = disabled, 1 = logfile and 2 = syslog. UseUTC Enable or disable using UTC as timezone in the database for all entries. When enabled, all entries added to the database will use UTC regardless of the configured system timezone. When dis- abled, the configured system timezone will be used. Changing this setting will not result in already existing data to be mod- ified. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. VacuumOnHUPSignal Enable or disable the execution of SQLite VACUUM command after the daemon has received a HUP signal. When enabled, the database file is rebuilt and repacked into a minimal amount of disk space. The difference in size can be notable especially if data retention durations have been reduced or previously monitored interfaces removed from the database. 1 = enabled, 0 = dis- abled. VacuumOnStartup Enable or disable the execution of SQLite VACUUM command during daemon startup. When enabled, the database file is rebuilt and repacked into a minimal amount of disk space. The difference in size can be notable especially if data retention durations have been reduced or previously monitored interfaces removed from the database. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. YearlyYears Data retention duration for the one year resolution entries. The configuration defines for how many past years entries will be stored. Set to -1 for unlimited entries or to 0 to disable the data collection of this resolution. IMAGE OUTPUT RELATED KEYWORDS 5MinuteGraphResultCount Number of 5 minute periods to be included in the 5 minute reso- lution graph. The value affects the width of the graph. Value range: 288..2000 5MinuteGraphHeight Height of 5 minute resolution graph in pixels. Value range: 150..2000 BarColumnShowsRate The bar column represents traffic rate in list outputs when en- abled. Requires also that OutputStyle has been configured to show the traffic rate column by using the value 3. Enabling this option will automatically cause EstimateStyle to have the value 0. Visually this option affects only the color legend text and the last line on the list if that line represents the cur- rently ongoing time period. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. CBackground Background color. CEdge Edge color, if visible. CHeader Header background color. CHeaderTitle Header title text color. CHeaderDate Header date text color. CLine Line color. CLineL Lighter version of line color. Set to '-' in order to use a cal- culated value based on CLine. CPercentileLine 95th percentile line color. Used only in 95th percentile graph. CRx Color for received data. CRxD Darker version of received data color. Set to '-' in order to use a calculated value based on CRx. CText Common text color. CTotal Color for total data, sum of received and transmitted data. Used only in 95th percentile graph. CTx Color for transmitted data. CTxD Darker version of transmitted data color. Set to '-' in order to use a calculated value based on CTx. EstimateStyle Show a visual representation of the traffic estimation. 0 = not shown, 1 = continuation of existing bar, 2 = separate bar. HeaderFormat Formatting of date in header. Uses the same format as date(1). HourlyGraphMode Select the output mode of the hourly graph. 0 = 24 hour sliding window, 1 = graph begins from midnight. HourlyRate Show hours with rate instead of transferred amount. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. ImageScale Scale output to given percent. Value range: 50..500 LargeFonts Increase the size of used fonts. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. LineSpacingAdjustment Adjust line spacing in list format outputs. Positive values in- crease the space between lines while negative values reduce it. Value range: -5..10 SummaryGraph Select which graph style output is shown next to the summary data in the horizontal and vertical summary outputs. 0 = hours, 1 = 5 minutes. SummaryRate Show rate in summary output if available. 1 = enabled, 0 = dis- abled. TransparentBg Set background color as transparent. 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled. FILES /etc/vnstat.conf Config file that will be used unless $HOME/.vnstatrc exists or alternative value is given as command line parameter. RESTRICTIONS Using long date output formats may cause misalignment in shown columns if the length of the date exceeds the fixed size allocation. AUTHOR Teemu Toivola <tst at iki dot fi> SEE ALSO vnstat(1), vnstati(1), vnstatd(8), units(7) version 2.13 FEBRUARY 2025 VNSTAT.CONF(5)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMON KEYWORDS | DAEMON RELATED KEYWORDS | IMAGE OUTPUT RELATED KEYWORDS | FILES | RESTRICTIONS | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO
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