Ever wanted to monitor your servers remotely using your iPhone? iStat for the iPhone is a great monitoring tool for your servers or Macs. In order to use iStat you will need to install iStat server on the machines you would like to monitor. This article will walk you through the fairly painless install process. Painless if you are willing to dive into command line!
iStat Server Installation
The first thing we will do is make sure you have the necessary packages installed in order to install iStat server. This article assumes you know how to get around terminal.
You need to make sure you have a few items installed first. Make sure to updates your database of available packages available.
# sudo apt-get update
The next package is essential in order to install iStat Server. It contains an informational list of packages that are essential for building Debian packages.
# sudo apt-get install build-essential
Another package needed.
# sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
I will give you the link so you can determine what is the newest version. You don’t have to download it from here.
As of this post the latest version is 0.5.7 , click below to make sure you get the newest version number of iStat Server. No downloading required.
http://github.com/tiwilliam/istatd/downloads/
Notice the file name , in this case its istatd-0.5.7.tar.gz.
Once you ssh into your server, navigate to your root directory.
# cd /
Lets download iStat Server to the root of your server. If there is a newer version of iStat please use that version.
# sudo wget http://github.com/tiwilliam/istatd/downloads/istatd-0.5.7.tar.gz
Unzip the downloaded file, again keeping in mind the latest version number.
# sudo tar -zxvf istatd-0.5.7.tar.gz
Navigate into the new directory that was extracted.
# cd istatd-0.5.7
Lets start installing!
# ./configure
# sudo make
# sudo make install
We will need to create a user iStat and give the proper permissions.
# useradd istat
# sudo mkdir /var/run/istat
#sudo chown istat /var/run/istat
By default iStat server is running on port 5109 and passcode 12345. You may want to change these in the config file. If you change the passcode make sure you use a 5 digit number. I was unable to get it to work with less then 5 digits.
#sudo pico /usr/local/etc/istat.conf
Once you alter your istat.conf file then you can fire up iStat server
# sudo /usr/local/bin/istatd -d
If you want to kill the process run
# sudo killall -v istatd
Once you start iStat server you can fire up your iStat app. Of course you will need to purchase it. Below is a link where you can get it.
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- This is how you add a server. There is even a test button. Port 5109 is the default port.
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- This view will present you a list of all your servers
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- iStats remote vital statistics
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