[CentOS] ntop from rpmforge

Tue Nov 25 08:23:41 UTC 2008
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

I installed ntop on a centos5.2 system (which got all yum updates a few 
days ago)...

    # rpm -q ntop rrdtool
    ntop-3.3.8-1.el5.rf
    rrdtool-1.2.28-1.el5.rf

went through the password configuration

when I start it, its erroring.

# service ntop start
Starting ntop:    Processing file /etc/ntop.conf for parameters...
Mon Nov 24 23:56:36 2008  NOTE: Interface merge enabled by default
Mon Nov 24 23:56:36 2008  Initializing gdbm databases
FATAL ERROR: Unrecognized/unprocessed ntop options...
                                                 --user ntop,     
--db-file-path 
/var/ntop,                                                                 

run ntop --help for usage information

    Common problems:
        -B "filter expressions" (quotes are required)
        --use-syslog=facilty (the = is required)

[FAILED]


ooops!   near as I can tell, tis getting those options from 
/etc/ntop.conf and I've done a bit of futzzing in there to try and sort 
it out but to no avail.

before I go and break things totally, what did I do wrong??

if I run ntop --daemon from the command prompt, it seems to work fine.

# ntop @/etc/ntop.conf --daemon
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  NOTE: Interface merge enabled by default
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Initializing gdbm databases
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  ntop v.3.3.8 (Dag Apt RPM Repository)
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Configured on Oct  6 2008  1:40:18, built on 
Oct  6 2008 01:41:15.
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Copyright 1998-2007 by Luca Deri <deri at ntop.org>
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Get the freshest ntop from http://www.ntop.org/
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  NOTE: ntop is running from 'ntop'
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  NOTE: (but see warning on man page for the 
--instance parameter)
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  NOTE: ntop libraries are in '/usr/lib'
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Initializing ntop
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  No patterns to load: protocol guessing disabled.
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Checking eth0 for additional devices
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Resetting traffic statistics for device eth0
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Initializing device eth0 (0)
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  DLT: Device 0 [eth0] is 1, mtu 1514, header 14
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Initializing gdbm databases
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: Loading MAC address table.
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: Checking for MAC address table file
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: File '/etc/ntop/specialMAC.txt.gz' 
does not need to be reloaded
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: ntop continues ok
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: Checking for MAC address table file
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: File '/etc/ntop/oui.txt.gz' does not 
need to be reloaded
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  VENDOR: ntop continues ok
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Fingerprint: Loading signature file
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Fingerprint: Checking for Fingerprint file... file
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Fingerprint: Loading file 
'/etc/ntop/etter.finger.os.gz'
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  Fingerprint: ...loaded 0 records
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  INIT: Parent process is exiting (this is normal)
Tue Nov 25 00:07:35 2008  INIT: Bye bye: I'm becoming a daemon...