Running ntop for the first time
===============================
The 1st time ntop is run, ntop will prompt the user for the admin password and
create a new password database file.
The most efficient way to do this is to manually run ntop with a limited command
line, let it create the file and then shutdown.
After the 1st run, ntop will operate without this intervention, unless the
password database ntop_pw.db can not be found, which is treated as a 1st time
run.
Remember - you must create a user for ntop to run. This userid should have
only minimal privledges, but it needs to be able to read/write in the
directory where the ntop databases are stored. ntop is customary, but it
can be anything - it's shown as "<ntopuserid>" below.
The (recommended) minimal command line is:
/usr/bin/ntop -P <your directory> -u <ntopuserid> -A
DO NOT give the -d parameter. You may need other parameters if the default
values interfere with ntop's ability to run. But this execution will not be
operational for long, so don't bother with a full command line.
The output from ntop will look like this:
[root@tigger root]# /usr/bin/ntop -P /usr/share/ntop -u ntop -A
Wait please: ntop is coming up...
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Initializing IP services...
SSL is present but https is disabled: use -W <https port> for enabling it
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Initializing GDBM...
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Initializing network devices...
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS ntop v.2.0.99 ntop-02-04-12.tgz MT (SSL) [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (04/12/02 10:02:15 AM build)
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Listening on [eth0]
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Copyright 1998-2002 by Luca Deri <deri@ntop.org>
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Get the freshest ntop from http://www.ntop.org/
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Initializing...
...
DD/MMM/YYYY HH:MM:SS Welcome to sFlow: listening on UDP port 6343...
Please enter the password for the admin user:
*****enter the admin password ("admin" is NOT a good idea) and press enter!
Please enter the password again:
*****enter the admin password again and press enter!
*****ntop will store the password and stop.
You should now be able to run ntop as usual.
------------------------------------------------------
Burton M. Strauss III <BStrauss@acm.org> May 2002
(Revised to reflect the -A parameter)
