ntopng on 2.5.0 settings lost after restart service

Rai80

Since on 2.5.0 when I restart ntopng service all my preferences/settings are gone. Seems like it does a reset of everything.

Btw. I use ramdisk for /var/db. Don't know if this has affect.

Rai80

After troubleshooting I've found a workaround.

After setting preferences and settings I ran: /usr/local/bin/redis-cli save

This will save the settings to /var/db/ntopng.rdb (Redis DB)

tobira

Has there been any official acknowledgement on this? It's frustrating to have to reconfigure ntopng between reboots.

3freet

ntonpg package for pfsense has been broken for a long time, and still is in the latest 2.5 version. I generally try to separate network analysis tools from the firewall for performance reasons, but sometimes it's ok for non critical deployments. I recently had to integrate ntopng with pfsense in the same box, but found the package that ships with the package manager broken and full of bugs like the one mentioned in this post.

After a lot of troubleshooting, I concluded that the best approach is to install ntopng as a third party package from the command shell like on any other system.
You either follow the instructions here at packages.ntop.org/FreeBSD (Note that pfsense 2.5 is FreeBSD 12), or you simply use the official pkg.freebsd.org which is included in pfsense by default.

ntop.org will get you the latest development build, while freebsd.org has a stable 4.2 build, but sometimes they get too behind in version.

I wrote a dedicated blog post but this is the process in short:
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1- On pfsense 2.5, install ntopng and redis database using the shell

pkg install ntopng redis

2- Enable ntopng and redis services

sysrc redis_enable="YES"
sysrc ntopng_enable="YES"

3- Install Shellcmd package from pfsense gui package manager

4- Add the below entries to Shellcmd settings and save

service redis start
service ntopng start

5- Configure ntopng geolocation by downloading the relevant .mmdb files from MaxMind and place them in the folder
"/usr/local/share/ntopng/httpdocs/geoip"

6- Edit the startup script of ntopng to add your custom command arguments located in "/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ntopng"

7- Start redis and ntopng services, or simply reboot pfsense

service start redis
service start ntopng

Rai80

@3freet Thanks for sharing! Will try this.

guntery

6: how do you add the argument?

/usr/local/etc/ntopng.conf is ignored.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ntopng is ignored.

guntery

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ntopng

adding here worked:

command_args="-G ${ntopng_pidfile} -e --community -i vtnet1 -i -w 3000"

viktor_g

@rai80 said in ntopng on 2.5.0 settings lost after restart service:

Since on 2.5.0 when I restart ntopng service all my preferences/settings are gone. Seems like it does a reset of everything.

Btw. I use ramdisk for /var/db. Don't know if this has affect.

fixed in NTOPNG 0.8.13_10:
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/11640

ctuchik

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