We often need to have long-term ping statistics on some of our equipment which does not always support SNMP or which is in an environment which does not allow us to set up SNMP.

I explain in this article how to proceed with the installation and configuration of Smokeping which is then an ideal ally to achieve availability stats of this equipment. Here are some prerequisites: – SSH server installed – Fixed IP

First of all, you have to start by updating the system :

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Then you need to install some dependencies:

sudo apt install rrdtool fping

And finally Smokeping:

sudo apt install smokeping

Smokeping is now installed, you can access it via the IP address of the server it is installed on.

You can jump to the Targets configuration by editing the Targets file:

sudo vi /etc/smokeping/config.d/Targets

Inside, here is the syntax to follow:

++ SEPARATOR
menu = NAME_OF_MENU
title = TITLE_OF_THE_PAGE
host = IP_ADDRESS

Each uppercase element is to be personalized.

Here is an example if I want to monitor my Freebox for example:

++ Freebox
menu = Freebox
title=Freebox
host=192.168.1.1

Once your file is populated, you can close the editor and restart the Smokeping service:

sudo service smokeping restart

After a few minutes, the graphs will start appearing on the web interface.