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. ***Win32*** Skip -u, it's not valid for Win32 anyway... 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> Sep 2002 (Revised to reflect the -A parameter) (Revised w/ the Win32 skip -u note)