Installing Packetbeat on Fedora Server

Packetbeat is a lightweight network packet analyzer that helps monitor and analyze network traffic in real-time. It is part of the Elastic Stack and can be easily installed on Fedora Server. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Packetbeat on Fedora Server.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the installation of Packetbeat on Fedora Server, you need to:

• Have root access to the Fedora Server.
• Make sure that your system has access to the internet.

Step 1: Add Elastic Repository

Packetbeat is easily available through the Elastic repository. We will add the Elastic repository to our Fedora Server system using the following commands:

sudo rpm --import https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/elastic.repo <<EOF
[elastic]
name=Elastic repository for 7.x packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md
EOF

Step 2: Install Packetbeat

Once the Elastic repository is added, run the following command to update the repository and install Packetbeat:

sudo dnf update -y && sudo dnf install packetbeat -y

This command will install Packetbeat on your Fedora Server along with its dependencies.

Step 3: Configure Packetbeat

After installing Packetbeat, we need to configure it to collect and analyze network traffic. Open the configuration file with your preferred text editor:

sudo nano /etc/packetbeat/packetbeat.yml

In this configuration file, you need to specify the network interfaces you want to monitor along with the output destination.

For example, to monitor traffic on the network interface eth0 and send the output to Elasticsearch, set the following configuration in the packetbeat.yml configuration file:

packetbeat.interfaces.device: eth0
output.elasticsearch:
  hosts: ["http://localhost:9200"]

Step 4: Start Packetbeat

Finally, start and enable the Packetbeat service using the following commands:

sudo systemctl start packetbeat
sudo systemctl enable packetbeat

This will start the Packetbeat service and configure it to start automatically upon system boot.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have shown how to install Packetbeat on Fedora Server and get started with network traffic analysis. You can now configure Packetbeat to monitor network traffic on your preferred network interfaces and send the output to your desired destination.

If you want to self-host in an easy, hands free way, need an external IP address, or simply want your data in your own hands, give IPv6.rs a try!

Alternatively, for the best virtual desktop, try Shells!