luci-app-statistics

Out of the box, OpenWRT can show you real-time statistics, however it will not store the data for historical view. Install luci-app-statistics to have a nice historical data graphs for router, eg: ping, interfaces bandwidth utilization, cpu load, ram, disk, uptime, etc…

To see all the available collectd-modules, run: opkg list | grep collectd-mod

I've found the original description located at: https://advanxer.com/blog/2013/02/openwrt-monitoring-using-collectd/ (That link is 404: Wayback Machine shows: https://web.archive.org/web/20190915130657/https://advanxer.com/blog/2013/02/openwrt-monitoring-using-collectd/)

Thanks to advanxer.com!

luci-app-statistics is a collectd and rrdtool based statistics tool. For more details about collectd and rrdtool, see statistical.data.overview

For other Bandwidth Monitoring tools, see bwmon

The luci-app-statistics package is based on Collectd and uses RRD Tool to render diagram images from collected data.

1. opkg update and install

opkg update
opkg install luci-app-statistics

2. Install desired plugins

Several are suggested below, but many more exist. To see all the available collectd-modules, run: opkg list | grep collectd-mod

opkg list | grep collectd-mod
opkg install collectd-mod-ethstat collectd-mod-ipstatistics collectd-mod-irq collectd-mod-load collectd-mod-ping collectd-mod-powerdns collectd-mod-sqm collectd-mod-thermal collectd-mod-wireless

3. Enable daemons

/etc/init.d/collectd enable

Note that /tmp/rrd, the directory that keeps statistics data, resides in RAM and consequently will be lost after a reboot. To prevent this, you can configure a persistent storage location or configure backups - see below.

Configuration via UCI:

• View the config with uci export luci_statistics
• Edit /etc/config/luci_statistics to make changes.

Configuration via LuCI: After installing the packages, a new menu appears. See the config pages in Statistics→Setup All the installed collectd-modules will shown here, but only some of them are enabled by default.

• General Plugins tab: Review the sub-tabs to choose which statistics to monitor
• Network Plugins tab: Select which interfaces to monitor
• Output Plugins tab:
  • RRDtool sub-tab: To protect flash-memory from wearing out, the default Storage directory is /tmp/rrd. All statistics data will be lost on reboot. Alternatives:
    • Configure backups for sysupgrade and orderly shutdown/reboot, by checking the Backup RRD statistics box, or by setting the UCI configuration variable: uci set luci_statistics.collectd_rrdtool.backup=1. The statistics are saved to flash-memory only at shutdown or sysupgrade time or when generating a backup archive. If your router crashes or suffers a power failure or other disorderly restart, the statistics history from the previous orderly shutdown will be restored during reboot. To create backups more frequently than shutdown/reboot/sysupgrade, create a cron job to run service luci_statistics backup. (Full details of the mechanism are explained at https://github.com/openwrt/luci/tree/master/applications/luci-app-statistics#backups)
    • Consider having an automatic backup-restore script that runs when rebooting).
    • If you have a USB drive connected, set the Storage directory to a directory on that drive. NB Since pages are rendered by user 'nobody', the *.rrd files, the storage directory and all its parent directories need to be world readable. See https://forum.openwrt.org/t/trouble-with-luci-app-statistics-using-storage-directory-on-usb-drive/10683/4
    • Or use the Network sub-tab to send the statistics to another router/device that's acting as a collectd network listener.
  • Network sub-tab: collectd can either listen for other router's data, or send its data to other routers. The data collection interval must be the same in both devices in order to work properly.