Frequently Asked Questions

RPi-Monitor is displaying NaN instead of value in my “unsupported” distro. Can you fixe this issue?

There are a lot of GNU/Linux distribution available, I can’t support all of them. I decided since the beginning use to Raspbian as target OS. The version v2.13 has been tested with 2017-11-29-raspbian-stretch-lite.img on Raspberry Pi B.

Remember, in RPi-Monitor, everything is configurable. It should then be possible to update configuration files to match the specificities of your distro.

RPi-Monitor‘s graphs are not clean and frequently drop down to zero as in screenshot bellow. How can I have a clean curve?

RPi-Monitor is periodically getting data from program of files. If the program is not answering or if the file is empty, the value is unknown. This unknown value will be drawn as a zero in graphs. If, as in the upper example, the program reading the sensor isn’t giving reliable values, it is advised to create a script writing the temperature result into a file and to configure RPi-Monitor to read this file. In this case, if the file is not updated, the previous value will be read and drawn in graphs.

RPi-Monitor‘s web interface is not working, I’ve only white pages?

RPi-Monitor requires HTML5 local storage and cookies to work properly. You should check that these both functionalities are activated into your browser and check that no plug-ins is blocking them.

Is RPi-Monitor supporting distribution XXX? Can you make RPi-Monitor compatible with distribution XXX?

RPi-Monitor was developed on Raspbian. This distribution is then fully supported. I will not officially support any other distribution but you will find in github repository as well as in this documentation some configuration files that may help you to configure RPi-Monitor on your system. Remember, RPi-Monitor is highly configurable and should be able to run on every system able to run perl. Have a look to examples in this documentation for details.

I have a problems running rpimonitord: failed “Can’t locate _______.pm in @INC ...

The installation is not done properly. You should read again the installation procedure and pay attention to the dependencies.

I would like to use my favorite web server instead of the one embedded into RPi-Monitor. Is it possible?

Yes, this is possible but not recommended. RPi-Monitor embedded web server is optimized to reduce the usage of the SDCard (using shared memory instead of writing data on disk), reduce the resources used into the system. The Web interface is requiring some specific feature that can only be delivered by RPi-Monitor embedded web server (like empty.rrd file generation ensuring a clean display of graphs).

Can you add login/password and authentication to RPI-Monitor web interface?

No. I’ll never add such a feature to RPi-Monitor. Why? Just because it is something complex to do in a clean and fully secured way. Some software are already design to do the job and they do it well.

A solution is proposed in this documentation using nginx frontend.

Can I do customize RPi-Monitor, change data extracted, add images, change texts...

Yes, in RPi-Monitor almost everything is configurable. This can be done by configuration file. Everything is explained in this documentation.

I tried to install RPi-Monitor into an OS not officially supported and some data are missing. How can I fix it?

As said previously, in RPi-Monitor almost everything is configurable. You should find the command to execute or the file to read to get the missing value directly in the shell. Once the command is found you will need to update the configuration file. Have a look to RPi-Monitor configuration chapter and to Interactive Configuration Helper (rpimonitord -i).

I would like to monitor a cluster of raspberries with your tool. Is there a way to gather the whole data in one node?

It could have any answer to such a question. One possibility would be to use ssh and configure RPi-Monitor to execute commands on each remote nodes of your cluster and process the data locally.

To do so, you should create one configuration file per node to monitor and use all of them in RPi-Monitor. Using pages feature could be very usefull. You can use the main page to display some consolidate data in addition to one page per cluster.

You can also use the snmp capabilities to share data from node to central point.

I found a bug into RPi-Monitor. How can I share my discovery?

You should open an issue in github and describe you problem and how to reproduce it.

Download bandwidth is shown as negative values. It’s bug or feature?

This is a feature :-). But, remember, everything is customizable in RPI-Monitor...

I want to create a package for my favorite distribution which is not supported by defalut. How can I contribute to this project?

RPi-Monitor source code is hosted in github. Refer to Packaging section of contributing chapter <41_contributing.html#packaging> for details.

I’ve some issue with my installation or customization of RPi-Monitor and I want to reinstall it from scratch. How can I do it?

Here is the instruction to reinstall RPi-Monitor from scratch: First, uninstall RPi-Monitor with the following command:

apt-get purge rpimonitor
rm -fr /etc/rpimonitor
rm -fr /usr/share/rpimonitor

Then reinstall by following installation instruction of this documentation.

Some data are not extracting correctly at boot but when I restart rpimonotord everything becomes OK until I reboot. How can I fix thi issue?

If you reach such situation, you certainly configure your source using a command whitout the full path. For example gettemp.sh instead of /usr/bin/gettemp.sh. The first command is working in your shell because the variable $PATH is set and the executable is reachable (that why it work when you restart rpimonitord). When you start your computer, the $PATH variable is not set so gettemp.sh will not work. The solution is to use the full path command /usr/bin/gettemp.sh

I just update my distribution and RPi-Monitor is still saying that packages required to be updated. Why?

If you want to update this information immediately, you can execute this script manually: /etc/init.d/rpimonitord update. You can also install dpkg hook to execut this update automatically.

Refer to startup section of this documentation.

I required better resolutions of the reading provided by RPi-Monitor. Can we increase the frequency with which RPi-Monitor collects the data?

Yes, it is possible to define the RRD structure per data extracted. Refer to documentation and man page to know how use this advanced feature.

I want to uninstall RPi-Monitor, How can I do it?

To uninstall RPi-Monitor, you can execute the following command:

sudo apt-get remove rpimonitor

or:

sudo apt-get purge rpimontor

Finally delete the directory /var/lib/rpimonitor