From server management to protocol
analysis to visibility into systems, networks and traffic flows, these
free open source monitoring tools have you covered
"I am all about useful tools. One of my mottos is 'the right tool for the right job.'" –Martha Stewart
If
your "right job" involves wrangling computer networks and figuring out
how to do digital things effectively and efficiently or diagnosing why
digital things aren't working as they're supposed to, you've got your
hands full. Not only does your job evolve incredibly quickly becoming
evermore complex, but whatever tools you use need frequent updating
and/or replacing to keep pace, and that's what we're here for; to help
in your quest for the right tools.
We've
done several roundups of free network tools in the past, and since the
last one, technology has, if anything, sped up even more. To help you
keep up, we've compiled a new shortlist of seven of the most useful
tools that you should add to your toolbox.
We've got an excellent
tool for tracking and managing your IP address space, an amazing tool
for ad hoc programming by wiring modules of code together, a powerful
workflow platform, the broadest security penetration-testing platform we
know of, a slick Web-based server management system and arguably the
best and most capable network packet capture and analysis application
available.
So, you've got the right job and now, you've got the right tools. Martha would be proud of you. Mark Gibbs
The TeemIP welcome screen.
TeemIP: Easy IP Address Management
As
networks grow bigger, they become increasingly complex. Keeping a
handle on your network will eventually become impossible without tools
to help you plan and track what you've got, where it is and how it's
configured. Far too many organizations start off using Excel
spreadsheets for this kind of task, but as their networks scale there
always comes a point when they wind up with a bunch of Frankensheets
that become so unwieldy as to be useless. We have a better way. TeemIP from Combodo
is a better strategy for three important reasons; it scales, it
provides consistent and comprehensive documentation of your network IP
resources and it's free. TeemIP is a Change Management Database system
that combines IP address management with a trouble-ticketing system so
that IP addresses and network devices can be managed in the context of
locations, organizations, users and roles, and user trouble and change
requests can be tracked.
TeemIP is a Web-based application
that will run on pretty much any AMP stack (for example,
Apache/IIS/nginx with MySQL 5.5.3+ and PHP 5.3.6+), on Windows, Linux,
macOS and Solaris and with all of the major browsers. It will handle
IPv4 and IPv6 address registration, subnet and range planning, and it
provides capacity tracking and management with support for nesting to
allow delegation of IP spaces.
You
can allocate IP addresses and define reserved ranges for devices such
as printers and DHCP service as well as split, shrink and expand subnets
and subnet blocks, and generate reports and run audits. There's also
the ability to integrate external data sources, such as device
discovery, and import a huge range of data from CSV files, which, if
you've been relying on spreadsheets, gives you the invaluable ability to
repurpose existing data. You can also export to CSV, HTML and XML
formats using Object Query Language.
A
feature that makes TeemIP really powerful is the integrated trouble-
and change-ticketing system. You can define ticketing-system users to be
administrators, configuration managers, document authors, helpdesk
agents, hostmasters, portal power users, just a portal user or a
combination of those roles. Authentication can be local, via LDAP or
external (for example, by Active Directory or OAuth).
TeemIP, which is free and open source, comes in two versions: standalone or as an extension to Combodo's ITop,
an IT Services Management solution which, in turn, has a FOSS community
edition as well as three premium editions with additional features. Bottom Line:
TeemIP is a powerful and sophisticated IP Address Management solution
and the developer, Combodo, is very much on top of support requests and
regularly rolls out new versions with new features. TeemIP is definitely
worth considering as a central component of your network management
strategy. Mark Gibbs
The Node-RED user interface.
Node-RED: Wiring Nodes to Solve Anything
Internet of Things projects are what all the cool kids are into these days, and one of the faves in this world is Node-RED, a flow-based programming system developed by IBM. Based on the Node.js
JavaScript, Node-RED runs on every operating system Node.js supports,
which includes Windows, Linux, macOS, SunOS and AIX. You can even run it
on single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi and the Beaglebone
with full support for all of the on-board input/output facilities. In
fact, Node-RED now comes built-in to the Raspberry Pi's Raspbian
operating system. There are also a Docker image and several cloud
services including IBM Bluemix, SenseTecnic FRED, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure offers hosted Node-RED instances.
While
much has been written about Node-RED's role in IoT solutions, it's also
an incredibly useful general-purpose application platform particularly
for quick, ad-hoc solutions that makes it an invaluable addition to your
digital toolkit.
Node-RED is completely browser-based, and it
uses the metaphor of wiring nodes together. For example, here's a simple
flow that took me perhaps a minute to build: IDG
A simple Node-RED flow to handle a browser request and return content from a Web service. The first node fields HTTP requests on the end point /lights
under the Node-RED server's base URL then the second node, triggered by
a message from the first node, makes an HTTP request to the Philips Hue bridge
on my network. The response is a JSON structure that reports the status
of the Hue bulbs in my house. This response is then sent to the third
node and used as the response to the original request with the
Content-Type header set to application/json. I'm using the Chrome JSON Viewer. Mark Gibbs
The browser output of a simple Node-RED flow that returns JSON data. Node-RED comes with many built-in nodes that cover general
input and output, social connections, and utility functions (including
one so you can add JavaScript to manipulate the content of messages).
The Node-RED site has a library of user contributions nodes that
currently includes 1,360 nodes and 817 flows.
But wait! There's
more! Node-RED also has a dashboard so you can create user interfaces
with graphs, sliders, switches, buttons and so on. Mark Gibbs
A Node-RED dashboard. Bottom Line: Node-RED is a tool you
absolutely need to have in your toolbox. Its functionality and
versatility make it indispensable for quick solutions to a wide range of
problems, and as a platform for your IoT projects, it's outstanding. ProcessMaker
Designing a workflow in ProcessMaker.
ProcessMaker: Workflows to Rescue Your Weekend
It's
Friday morning, and your boss tells you there's a problem; the marketing
department has a hot, new and very expensive product with hot new
literature that's also really expensive to produce. They can't give
every dealer as much literature as they'd like so every dealer request
needs to be tracked with a sequence of people required to sign off on
sending it out. Oh, and they need the tracking system up and running by
Monday to tie in with the product launch! Normally this would mean that
any plans you have for the weekend would be history but…wait! There's ProcessMaker!
ProcessMaker offers an eponymous free, open source
Web-based workflow development and deployment system that runs on all
major platforms including Windows, macOS, Linux, Google Cloud, OpenShift
and Cloud Foundry, as well as several Java EE application servers.
ProcessMaker also has premium editions
with extra features and support, but for internal purposes and testing,
the community edition is incredibly useful and powerful.
You
access ProcessMaker apps via a Web browser, and all content is
automatically mobile ready. So, to address the problem that's just been
dropped into your lap, you'll turn to ProcessMaker's Designer
application-development interface and drag-and-drop components from the
tool palette to create a BPMN2
specification of your workflow and link them together in sequence.
After that, you'll define the Dynaforms (ProcessMaker's name for
"dynamic forms") that each step uses, the external database connections,
input and output documents, etc., and your workflow will be ready to go
to work.
Individual workflows in ProcessMaker are called "cases"
and are started in either the home workspace that also shows all of the
cases assigned to the user or via a Web-based data-entry form. These
data-entry forms, which are only available at the start of a workflow
(though you can have multiple starts), are assigned URLs that are as
user-friendly as a cornered rat. For example:
http://192.168.0.12/sysworkflow/en/neoclassic/4917507125ab17bbb003ae0003802188/2095890195ab18f35d7c1a8078407912Post.php.
But
fear not! If you want to make a form available via a friendly link, you
can embed the form in a custom Web page; ProcessMaker provides detailed
documentation on how to do this.
When
a user starts a case, its data is routed to the next workflow step;
conditional routing is supported so, for example, when the sales manager
reviews a dealer's request for literature, she can check a box to
confirm literature should be sent and then the case data will be
forwarded to the next approval stage and so on. Alternatively, if the
request is denied, an email message might be sent to the dealer saying
something like "We'd love to send you literature but..."
The
progress of cases is logged in detail to provide a complete audit trail.
To track the effectiveness of workflows, ProcessMaker also provides
dashboards on which you can install widgets to report on Key Performance
Indicators.This description of ProcessMaker is just scratching the
surface; it's got many more features for managing workflows and can also
be extended by programming in JavaScript.
ProcessMaker is fairly
easy to come to grips with. I created a workflow for the literature
allocation system after only a couple of hours of study. To make testing
ProcessMaker even easier, Bitnami
offers ready-made installers for all major operating systems, a cloud
installer and a virtual machine. From other sources, there's also a Docker image. I used the Bitnami virtual-machine image and was in business in about five minutes. Bottom Line:
ProcessMaker is easy to get up and running and, for a complex and
powerful system, it's fairly easy to learn. Once you're familiar with
it, ProcessMaker is a tool that will save you a lot of time solving
workflow problems and quite possibly save your weekends, too. Atom
Among a long list of features, the Atom editor provides syntax coloring for common log-file formats.
Atom: An Editor for all IT Tasks
How often do you
have to edit a configuration file or review a log or hack some code? If
you're in the IT business these tasks come up all the time, so what
tools do you use? If the answer is a list of applications rather than a
single tool, check out Atom, a free, open source editor
that's incredibly versatile, extensible, small and runs on Windows,
macOS and Linux. Atom is also eminently hackable as it's built on Electron, a framework for building cross-platform apps that's based on HTML, JavaScript, CSS and Node.js.
Atom
comes with four user-interface themes and eight syntax themes in both
dark and light colors. Don't like those? You can tweak the look and feel
of the user interface with CSS or Less as well as add any features you
like with HTML and JavaScript.
Among Atom's optional add-ons there's a package that performs syntax coloring
for common log formats, and Atom provides other packages to deliver
IDE-like functionality with context-aware auto-completion and code
navigation features such as an outline view, go to definition, find all
references, hover-to-reveal information, diagnostics (errors and
warnings) and document formatting. Another incredibly powerful and
useful feature is GitHub integration so you can create repos and
branches, stage and commit, push and pull, resolve merge conflicts, view
pull requests and more, all from within the editor.
Collaborative development is becoming a big thing, and Atom is definitely au courant here: Atom's Teletype
package makes it as easy for developers to code together by creating
real-time "portals" for sharing workspaces. When a user opens a portal,
their active tab becomes a shared workspace where invited collaborators
can join in and make edits in real time, and as the host moves between
files, the collaborators follow the active tab automatically.
Teletype
is also secure. When a portal is created, users connect to the Atom
servers to see who is collaborating, and when they join a portal, the
collaborators communicate on a peer-to-peer basis so there's no
centralized server to spy on keystrokes. In addition, WebRTC is used to encrypt all communications. As the Atom site notes: "What happens in the portal stays in the portal."
From server management to protocol
analysis to visibility into systems, networks and traffic flows, these
free open source monitoring tools have you covered
Previous12
Finally, there's a very polished and well-documented API for
creating your own add-on packages and integrating with other
applications and services. Bottom Line: Atom is amazing! Its functionality is outstanding, its documentation
is extensive and well written, and it can handle pretty much any
IT-related editing task. Highly recommended for your toolbox as a
"write" tool. (Sorry.) Mark Gibbs
Kali Linux applications menu.
Kali Linux: Your Security Swiss Army Knife
When it
comes to network and computer analysis, digital forensics and
penetration testing, there's one set of tools you definitely need in
your toolbox: Kali Linux.
Calling Kali a security Swiss Army knife is, I admit, a rather
hackneyed description but I have yet to find a richer, more useful set
of programs on such a well-thought out platform for digital security.
Developed by Offensive Security, the free, open source Kali distribution is available in multiple formats including "live" versions, hard disk installable versions, and ARM versions. You can also find Kali virtual machines on the Offensive Security site in VMware, VirtualBox and Hyper-V image formats. But be warned, on the VM download page
Offensive notes “…the images provided below are maintained on a best
effort basis.. ." I just wasted a couple of hours trying to figure out
why one particular package, Maltego, in the virtual machine package wouldn't run, but when I created a VM from the ISO version, there was no problem.
Kali
Linux is based on the extremely stable Debian distribution with some
major changes. First, because Kali's focus is security, it's designed to
be "quiet", that is, to make a minimal impact on whatever network it is
connected to so that it can be used for discovery purposes with as
little chance as possible of being noticed. To ensure this, if you add a
service such as an HTTP server it will, by default, have to be launched
by the user each time the system starts (you can get around this
constraint if you really need to). This feature underlines how different
Kali is; it's not a distribution for office productivity or games, it's
a hardcore security platform.
Second, the pre-installed packages
aren't the usual Linux fare; a few of the usual suspects are left out
and a huge number of serious security tools are included. These tools
are grouped by functionality in the Applications menu and include
Information Gathering, Vulnerability Analysis, Web Application Analysis,
Password Attacks, Wireless Attack – in all there are 14 groups, many
with subgroups, organizing over 240 tools covering all of the major security concerns. Bottom Line:
To say that Kali Linux and its collection of tools are invaluable would
be an understatement. With Kali you can interrogate your digital
assets, discover threats and attacks, find vulnerabilities and test your
defenses. For free. Another warning: Many of these tools have steep
learning curves so to get the most out of them you'll have to invest
some serious time and effort. Webmin
Webmin's Web interface hosted on CentOS system.
Webmin: How to Manage Any Host, Anywhere
If you're
running a collection of Web apps you're going to have a constellation of
servers to deliver them. Given the complexity of the environment you'll
have to make a decision on just how many server-management tools you'll
need and at what point will you have too many tools to manage your
machines efficiently. If you've found, or might find, yourself in this
situation, you should take a look at Webmin, a system that provides an impressively deep dive into host systems for monitoring and management.
Webmin runs on a ridiculously large number of systems (currently the Webmin support page lists 103 operating systems and variants) and is straightforward to install
on most platforms via the system command line (for some OSs, such as
Windows, the process can be a bit more complicated). Once installed, you
access the Webmin configuration module that is essentially the "uber"
module from which all other modules are managed; the documentation
explains: "It lets you do things like change the port [that] Webmin
uses, limit the client addresses that can connect, change the theme and
language that the user interface uses and install new modules." Webmin
The Webmin configuration module. Make no mistake, even at initial installation this is a
system with a huge range of add-on features and facilities, and Webmin
provides a remarkable degree of control over the host. For example, with
the base installation you can monitor performance, shut down and
restart, create or restore backups of critical system files either on
demand or via a schedule and save or retrieve backups using local
storage or another host via FTP or SSH. Webmin
The Webmin MySQL database management module. One feature I've found invaluable is the ability to manage
databases via Webmin, which allows you to create, modify, delete, backup
and restore databases, tables, fields and records as well as manage
users and permissions.
Finally, Webmin also supports clustering
for package management allowing you to perform tasks on a group of
machines simultaneously. There are also modules that support clustered
password management, file copying, cron job management, shell commands,
and user and group management. Bottom Line: As a
strategy for managing servers, particularly clusters of cloned systems,
Webmin is well worth evaluating. It's flexible, extensible and by all
accounts very robust. Mark Gibbs
Wireshark user interface.
Wireshark: Snapping Up Packets and Protocols
Sometimes
you just have to get down and dirty and start pulling data packets
apart looking for whatever is causing whatever problem you have. Quite a
few commercial tools for doing this exist but the tool that many
consider to be arguably the best, Wireshark, is not only free, it's open source as well.
Wireshark
is a packet-capture and network protocol analyzer suitable for networks
up to the scale of those of mid-sized companies and runs on Windows and
macOS; there's also a Windows PortableApps version. Additionally, third
parties have ported Wireshark to many Linux distributions as well as
including UNIX, HP/UX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris.
Installing
Wireshark is easy, and once it's running, you can start capturing
packets on one or more of the interfaces available on your machine
(supported interfaces include Ethernet, Wi-Fi, VLAN, Bluetooth, USB and
loopbacks) using a capture filter to restrict which packets are kept. Then, when you stop capturing, you can use a display filter
to exclude captured packets so you can focus on the traffic that
matters to you. Filtering is extremely flexible, allowing you to filter
by packet type (TCP or UDP), protocol (POP, IMAP, SMTP, DNS, etc.),
source and destination addresses, address ranges, time and/or specific
data in packets.
Wireshark decodes a huge range of protocols, and you can enable the Expert Info feature that automatically color-codes exceptions according to the severity level. The Wireshark site explains:
"The general idea behind…Expert Info is to have a better display of
'uncommon' or just notable network behaviour. This way, both novice and
expert users will hopefully find probable network problems a lot faster,
compared to scanning the packet list 'manually.'"
Wireshark also
reads and writes capture data in several capture file formats including
pcapng, libpcap, Microsoft Network, Network Associates Sniffer and
Oracle snoop. Bottom Line: If you're a network
engineer trying to track down service problems such DHCP or DNS issues,
or you're a programmer developing network applications or a network
security engineer watching for anomalies or any of the scores of other
reasons for wanting to capture, slice and dice network traffic, this is
This story, "7 free networking tools you must have" was originally published by
InfoWorld.
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