Table of Contents

Installing vnStat in Debian

Disclaimer

These instructions assume

  1. access to 'root' account or user with admin permissions
  2. use only distribution version specific instructions
  3. some basic Linux skills
  4. commands aren't copypasted blindly
  5. that the process is stopped in case of errors

Debian 8 (jessie) and later

Open a terminal and gain root permissions

su -

Verify that root has been gained

whoami

which should reply "root".

Install needed development packages

apt-get update
apt-get install make gcc libc6-dev wget libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev

Get the latest release and extract it

cd /usr/src
wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-2.10.tar.gz
tar zxvf vnstat-2.10.tar.gz

Compile and install the binaries

cd vnstat-2.10
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc && make && make install

Install the service file and start the daemon

cp -v examples/systemd/vnstat.service /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl enable vnstat
systemctl start vnstat

Verify that daemon process got started

pgrep -c vnstatd

which should reply "1". A reply of "0" indicates that the process has failed to start.

Debian 7 (wheezy) and most likely also older releases

Open a terminal and gain root permissions

su -

Verify that root has been gained

whoami

which should reply "root".

Install needed development packages

apt-get update
apt-get install make gcc libc6-dev wget libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev

Get the latest release and extract it

cd /usr/src
wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-2.10.tar.gz
tar zxvf vnstat-2.10.tar.gz

Compile and install the binaries

cd vnstat-2.10
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc && make && make install

Install the service file and start the daemon

cp -v examples/init.d/debian/vnstat /etc/init.d/
update-rc.d vnstat defaults
/etc/init.d/vnstat start

Verify that daemon process got started

pgrep -c vnstatd

which should reply "1". A reply of "0" indicates that the process has failed to start.