Installing and using softflowd

Softflowd – NetFlow network traffic analyzer.

You can install in Ubuntu/Debian using the command:

sudo apt-get install softflowd

After installation, you need to open its configuration file, for example, in the nano editor (Ctrl+X for exit, y/n for saving or canceling changes):

sudo nano /etc/default/softflowd

And specify the parameters, for example:

INTERFACE="any"
OPTIONS="-n 192.168.1.40:5556"

After the changes, perform a restart:

sudo /etc/init.d/softflowd restart

Let’s look at the statistics of softflowd:

softflowctl statistics

If it is not running, there will be an error:

ctl connect(“/var/run/softflowd.ctl”) error: Connection refused

Display information about all monitored threads:

sudo softflowctl dump-flows

Information about softflowctl can be viewed by the command:

man softflowctl

I’ll describe other startup options:
-n (specify the network node and port on which will work softflowd)
-i (interface on which will work softflowd)
-r pcap_file (reading information from a file, not a network interface)
-p pidfile (alternative location for storing the process identifier, standard /var/run/softflowd.pid)
-c ctlsock (alternative location for the socket, standard /var/run/softflowd.ctl)
-m max_flows (maximum number of threads for simultaneous tracking)
-6 (consider also IPv6 data)
-D (debug mode)
-T track_level (level of tracking, can be full, proto, ip)
-v netflow_version (netflow version)

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