README.lnstat

lnstat - linux networking statistics
(C) 2004 Harald Welte <laforge@gnumonks.org
======================================================================

This tool is a generalized and more feature-complete replacement for the old
'rtstat' program.

In addition to routing cache statistics, it supports any kind of statistics
the linux kernel exports via a file in /proc/net/stat.  In a stock 2.6.9
kernel, this is 
	per-protocol neighbour cache statistics 
		(ipv4, ipv6, atm, decnet)
	routing cache statistics
		(ipv4)
	connection tracking statistics
		(ipv4)

Please note that lnstat will adopt to any additional statistics that might be
added to the kernel at some later point

I personally always like examples more than any reference documentation, so I
list the following examples.  If somebody wants to do a manpage, feel free
to send me a patch :)

EXAMPLES:

In order to get a list of supported statistics files, you can run

	lnstat -d

It will display something like
 
/proc/net/stat/arp_cache:
         1: entries
         2: allocs
         3: destroys
[...]
/proc/net/stat/rt_cache:
         1: entries
         2: in_hit
         3: in_slow_tot

You can now select the files/keys you are interested by something like

	lnstat -k arp_cache:entries,rt_cache:in_hit,arp_cache:destroys

arp_cach|rt_cache|arp_cach|
 entries|  in_hit|destroys|
       6|       6|       0|
       6|       0|       0|
       6|       2|       0|


You can specify the interval (e.g. 10 seconds) by:
	
	lnstat -i 10

You can specify to only use one particular statistics file:

	lnstat -f ip_conntrack

You can specify individual field widths 

	lnstat -k arp_cache:entries,rt_cache:entries -w 20,8

You can specify not to print a header at all
	
	lnstat -s 0

You can specify to print a header only at start of the program

	lnstat -s 1

You can specify to print a header at start and every 20 lines:

	lnstat -s 20

You can specify the number of samples you want to take (e.g. 5):
	
	lnstat -c 5