HOAB

Problem :

I built a network monitoring solution following this guides :

• https://www.technicallywizardry.com/building-your-own-router-raspberry-pi/
• https://www.technicallywizardry.com/raspberry-pi-network-monitor/

Truly, a great job.

But I has build the solution at home for another network, I would like that my raspberry start and monitor at boot. And I missed in the comments or text a few thing.

Solution :

I created services as described in the comment for prometheus, add another for the tcpdump. Don't forget prometheus working directory in this configuration (no specific user for prometheus).
 

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
After=tcpdump.service

[Service]
User=pi
Group=pi
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/prometheus/prometheus-2.23.0.linux-armv7
ExecStart=/home/pi/prometheus/prometheus-2.23.0.linux-armv7/prometheus \
    --config.file /home/pi/prometheus/prometheus.yml

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/tcpdump.service

[Unit]
Description=TCPDump service for traffic monitoring
After=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=idle
ExecStart=python3 /home/pi/network-traffic-metrics/network-traffic-metrics.py "(src net 192.168.10.0/24 and not dst net 192.168.10.0/24) or (dst net 192.168.10.0/24 and not src net 192.168.10.0/24)"
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

But I had some network issues :

First, disable dhcpcd and install isc-dhcp-server

In my case, I keep dhcpcd as it mount the network interfaces eth0 & eth1. I also put a no gateway on eth0 (my lan part)

My dhcpcd.conf configuration for interfaces :

interface eth1
static ip_address=192.168.1.10
static routers=192.168.1.1
static domain_name_servers=1.1.1.1
static domain_search=1.1.1.1

interface eth0
static ip_address=192.168.10.1
static routers=192.168.10.1
static domain_name_servers=1.1.1.1
static domain_search=1.1.1.1
nogateway

But with this configuration, at boot :

• isc-dhcp-server and tcpdump

were not started because eth0 was not up or plugged. In my case, I could plug eth0 later.

So I took a while, but I found the network hook that works (forget all /etc/network thing, dhcpcd do not use it).

Create a file (not a directory...) called /etc/dhcpcd.exit-hook with

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$interface" = "eth0" & "$reason" = "STATIC" & "$if_up" = "true" ]
then
	systemctl start tcpdump
	systemctl start isc-dhcp-server.service
fi 

And all is starting when eth0 is going up.