How to monitor the Bandwidth Usage in Ubuntu

Recipe: This cool trick comes in handy if you are a WiMax or a satellite internet user AND you are restricted to a daily or monthly bandwidth usage. Apart from the web based interface given to you by the company, it would be nice if you can monitor you daily usage. This would help you SAVE money these ISPs charge when you go just a byte over the restriction.

Ingredients: Conky and vnStat

Code:

sudo vnstat -u -i eth0

to create a database.

then

Code:

vnstat

You can use conky to display vnstat data.

Code:

sudo apt-get install conky

Save this config in your home folder as .conkyrc

Code:

background yes font Sans Seriff:size=9 xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:size=10 use_xft yes xftalpha 0.8 update_interval 1.0 total_run_times 0 own_window yes own_window_type normal own_window_transparent yes own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager double_buffer yes draw_shades yes draw_outline no draw_borders no draw_graph_borders no minimum_size 300 maximum_width 300 default_color 919FAA default_shade_color 333333 default_outline_color 00ff00 alignment br gap_x 10 gap_y 10 no_buffers yes cpu_avg_samples 2 override_utf8_locale yes uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase use_spacer right  # colours #off white color1 BDAC88  # cream color2 D2B16A  # cyan #color3 08A1A1  # bluemoon color3 919FAA  # yellow color4 F1BC49  # Green color5 00940F  #dark cyan color6 074C4C   #grey color7 6b6b6b  #orange color8 AF560D  #yellow color9 F1BC49  #lua_load /home/glen/conky/draw_bg.lua #lua_draw_hook_pre draw_bg  TEXT ${goto 90}${color1}${font DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:size=12}INTERNET USAGE ${goto 90}${voffset -15}______________ ${goto 90}${font DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:size=10}${color3}Down${goto 170}${color9}Up${goto 235}${color5}Total ${goto 10}${font DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:size=9}${color1}Yesterday: ${color3}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "yesterday" | awk '{print $2 $3}'}${goto 170}${color9}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "yesterday" | awk '{print $5 $6}'}${goto 235}${color5}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "yesterday" | awk '{print $8 $9}'} ${goto 10}    ${color1}Today: ${color3}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "today" | awk '{print $2 $3}'}${goto 170}${color9}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "today" | awk '{print $5 $6}'}${goto 235}${color5}${execi 300 vnstat | grep "today" | awk '{print $8 $9}'} ${goto 10}     ${color1}Week: ${color3}${execi 300 vnstat -w | grep "current week" | awk '{print $3 $4}'}${goto 170}${color9}${execi 300 vnstat -w | grep "current week" | awk '{print $6 $7}'}${goto 235}${color5}${execi 300 vnstat -w | grep "current week" | awk '{print $9 $10}'} ${goto 10}    ${color1}Month: ${color3}${execi 300 vnstat -m | grep "`date +"%b '%y"`" | awk '{print $3 $4}'}${goto 170}${color9}${execi 300 vnstat -m | grep "`date +"%b '%y"`" | awk '{print $6 $7}'}${goto 235}${color5}${execi 300 vnstat -m | grep "`date +"%b '%y"`" | awk '{print $9 $10}'}${font}

Alt+F2 and run conky
and you should see the attached pic in the bottom right corner.

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