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README.md

Web server

The Netdata web server runs as static-threaded, i.e. with a fixed, configurable number of threads. It uses non-blocking I/O and respects the keep-alive HTTP header to serve multiple HTTP requests via the same connection.

Configuration

You can disable the web server by editing netdata.conf and setting:

[web]
    mode = none

With the web server enabled, you can control the number of threads and sockets with the following settings:

[web]
    web server threads = 4
    web server max sockets = 512

The default number of processor threads is min(cpu cores, 6).

The web server max sockets setting is automatically adjusted to 50% of the max number of open files netdata is allowed to use (via /etc/security/limits.conf or systemd), to allow enough file descriptors to be available for data collection.

Binding netdata to multiple ports

Netdata can bind to multiple IPs and ports, offering access to different services on each. Up to 100 sockets can be used (you can increase it at compile time with CFLAGS="-DMAX_LISTEN_FDS=200" ./netdata-installer.sh ...).

The ports to bind are controlled via [web].bind to, like this:

[web]
   default port = 19999
   bind to = 127.0.0.1=dashboard 10.1.1.1:19998=management|netdata.conf hostname:19997=badges [::]:19996=streaming localhost:19995=registry *:http=dashboard unix:/tmp/netdata.sock

Using the above, netdata will bind to:

  • IPv4 127.0.0.1 at port 19999 (port was used from default port). Only the UI (dashboard) and the read API will be accessible on this port.
  • IPv4 10.1.1.1 at port 19998. The management API and netdata.conf will be accessible on this port.
  • All the IPs hostname resolves to (both IPv4 and IPv6 depending on the resolved IPs) at port 19997. Only badges will be accessible on this port.
  • All IPv6 IPs at port 19996. Only metric streaming requests from other netdata agents will be accepted on this port.
  • All the IPs localhost resolves to (both IPv4 and IPv6 depending the resolved IPs) at port 19996. This port will only accept registry API requests.
  • All IPv4 and IPv6 IPs at port http as set in /etc/services. Only the UI (dashboard) and the read API will be accessible on this port.
  • Unix domain socket /tmp/netdata.sock. All requests are serviceable on this socket.

The option [web].default port is used when an entries in [web].bind to do not specify a port.

Note that the access permissions specified with the =request type|request type|... format are available from version 1.12 onwards. As shown in the example above, these permissions are optional, with the default being to permit all request types on the specified port. The request types are strings identical to the allow X from directives of the access lists, i.e. dashboard, streaming, registry, netdata.conf, badges and management. The access lists themselves and the general setting allow connections from in the next section are applied regardless of the ports that are configured to provide these services. The API requests are serviced as follows:

  • dashboard gives access to the UI, the read API and badges API calls.
  • badges gives access only to the badges API calls.
  • management gives access only to the management API calls.

Access lists

Netdata supports access lists in netdata.conf:

[web]
	allow connections from = localhost *
	allow dashboard from = localhost *
	allow badges from = *
	allow streaming from = *
	allow netdata.conf from = localhost fd* 10.* 192.168.* 172.16.* 172.17.* 172.18.* 172.19.* 172.20.* 172.21.* 172.22.* 172.23.* 172.24.* 172.25.* 172.26.* 172.27.* 172.28.* 172.29.* 172.30.* 172.31.*
	allow management from = localhost

* does string matches on the IPs of the clients.

  • allow connections from matches anyone that connects on the netdata port(s). So, if someone is not allowed, it will be connected and disconnected immediately, without reading even a single byte from its connection. This is a global settings with higher priority to any of the ones below.

  • allow dashboard from receives the request and examines if it is a static dashboard file or an API call the dashboards do.

  • allow badges from checks if the API request is for a badge. Badges are not matched by allow dashboard from.

  • allow streaming from checks if the slave willing to stream metrics to this netdata is allowed. This can be controlled per API KEY and MACHINE GUID in stream.conf. The setting in netdata.conf is checked before the ones in stream.conf.

  • allow netdata.conf from checks the IP to allow http://netdata.host:19999/netdata.conf. The IPs listed are all the private IPv4 addresses, including link local IPv6 addresses. Keep in mind that connections to netdata API ports are filtered by allow connections from. So, IPs allowed by allow netdata.conf from should also be allowed by allow connections from.

  • allow management from checks the IPs to allow API management calls. Management via the API is currently supported for health

Other netdata.conf [web] section options

setting default info
ses max window 15 See single exponential smoothing
des max window 15 See double exponential smoothing
listen backlog 4096 The port backlog. Check man 2 listen.
web files owner netdata The user that owns the web static files. Netdata will refuse to serve a file that is not owned by this user, even if it has read access to that file. If the user given is not found, netdata will only serve files owned by user given in run as user.
web files group netdata If this is set, Netdata will check if the file is owned by this group and refuse to serve the file if it's not.
disconnect idle clients after seconds 60 The time in seconds to disconnect web clients after being totally idle.
timeout for first request 60 How long to wait for a client to send a request before closing the socket. Prevents slow request attacks.
accept a streaming request every seconds 0 Can be used to set a limit on how often a master Netdata server will accept streaming requests from the slaves in a streaming and replication setup
respect do not track policy no If set to yes, will respect the client's browser preferences on storing cookies.
x-frame-options response header Avoid clickjacking attacks, by ensuring that the content is not embedded into other sites.
enable gzip compression yes When set to yes, netdata web responses will be GZIP compressed, if the web client accepts such responses.
gzip compression strategy default Valid strategies are default, filtered, huffman only, rle and fixed
gzip compression level 3 Valid levels are 1 (fastest) to 9 (best ratio)

DDoS protection

If you publish your netdata to the internet, you may want to apply some protection against DDoS:

  1. Use the static-threaded web server (it is the default)
  2. Use reasonable [web].web server max sockets (the default is)
  3. Don't use all your cpu cores for netdata (lower [web].web server threads)
  4. Run netdata with a low process scheduling priority (the default is the lowest)
  5. If possible, proxy netdata via a full featured web server (nginx, apache, etc)

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