Want to monitor Ubuntu Server remotely with a graphical interface? Well, there are quite a few ways. Here I’ll you a lightweight tool called Monitorix.

Monitorix is an open source tool which allows to monitor server information through your web browser. It displays graphs with:

• System load average and usage
• Global kernel usage
• Kernel usage per processor
• Filesystem usage and I/O activity
• eth0 network traffic and usage
• System services demand
• Network port traffic
• Users using the system
• Devices interrupt activity

Monitorix has a built-in HTTP server, it also works with Apache, Nginx, lighttpd, etc.

monitorix login screen

monitorix main window

Install Monitorix:

On Ubuntu/Debian server, first install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install rrdtool perl libwww-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-lite-perl librrds-perl libdbi-perl libxml-simple-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libconfig-general-perl

Download the DEB package (For the latest go to this page):

wget http://www.monitorix.org/monitorix_3.4.0-izzy1_all.deb

Install Monitorix:

sudo dpkg -i monitorix_3.4.0-izzy1_all.deb; sudo apt-get -f install

Start the service:

sudo service monitorix start

Finally, access remotely or locally by typing http://serverip:8080/monitorix in your web browser.

The config file is /etc/monitorix.conf. There you can change the port, deny or allow remote host, and something else.