Chia Wei Hu

How to build Ethereum Dashboard and to monitor your Ethereum Network Status

Published Dec 25, 2018

胡家維 Hu KennethBlockedUnblockFollowFollowing

Dec 12

DashBoard

Architecture

eth-netstats : This is a visual interface for tracking ethereum network status. It uses WebSockets to receive stats from running nodes and output them through an angular interface.
eth-net-intelligence-api : This is the backend service which runs along with ethereum and tracks the network status, fetches information through JSON-RPC and connects through WebSockets to eth-netstats to feed information. For full install instructions please read the wiki.
Ethereum node (it can be private node or public node)

Prerequisite

eth, geth or pyethapp — https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/
node — https://nodejs.org/en/
npm
Git — https://git-scm.com/

Here are the steps:

execute ethereum private/public node
Download and Install Tools
Configure the Node Monitoring App
Start the Node App
Start the Frontend

Folder structure

1. Execute ethereum private/public node

If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, please refer to my previous article for a step-by-step guide. To execute Ethereum private node the following command:

geth --networkid 4224 --datadir "E:\privateChain\GethPrivateChain" --nodiscover --rpc --rpcport "8545" --port "30303" --rpccorsdomain "*" --nat "any" --rpcapi eth,web3,personal,net --unlock 0 --password password.sec

2. Download and Install Tools

To clone and install eth-netsates run the following command:

C:\> git clone [https://github.com/cubedro/eth-netstats](https://github.com/cubedro/eth-netstats) 
C:\> cd eth-netstats 
C:\eth-netstats> npm install 
C:\eth-netstats> npm install -g grunt-cli
C:\eth-netstats> grunt

To clone and install eth-net-intelligence-api run the following command:

C:\> git clone https://github.com/cubedro/eth-net-intelligence-api 
C:\> cd eth-net-intelligence-api 
C:\eth-net-intelligence-api> npm install 
C:\eth-net-intelligence-api> npm install -g pm2

3. Configure the Node Monitoring App

We will need to modify the app.json file located in the eth-net-intelligence-api directory:

There are few configurations that need to be changed in this file.

"name": The name that will appear for your node app in the pm2 process manager (see next section for more details on pm2)
"RPC_HOST": The IP address for the machine hosting your running gethinstance
"RPC_PORT": The RPC port that your geth instance is running on
"LISTENING_PORT": The network listening port for your geth instance
"INSTANCE_NAME": The name that will appear on the dashboard in your browser for this particular node
"WS_SERVER": The server address for the frontend UI (i.e. eth-netstats) running in background
"WS_SECRET": The secret used to allow the frontend to connect eth-net-intelligence-api. You choose any value to put here.

In app.json, we have to modify three parameters, namely INSTANCE_NAME, WS_SERVERandWS_SECRET.

You can get INSTANCE_NAME from private chain information.

WS_SERVER will point eth-netstats so we use eth-netstats' default url :http://localhost:3000

We set WS_SECRET = "mysecret"

Finally app.json

4. Start The Node App

4.1 We execute the backend tool ( eth-net-intelligence-api ) run the following command:

C:\eth-net-intelligence-api> pm2 start app.json

Result

4.2 execute the front-end tool (eth-netstats ) run the following command:

C:\eth-netstats> set WS_SECRET=mysecret&& npm start

4.3 Issues:

You might encounter two issues- No action and wrong auth

4.3.1 No action

solution :

My solution is restart eth-net-intelligence-api again

C:\eth-net-intelligence-api> pm2 start app.json
or C:\eth-net-intelligence-api> pm2 restart <App name>

4.3.2 wrong auth as the following figure.

solution :

My solution is check my command and ws_secret, restart eth-net-intelligence-api and then run my eth-netstats command again.

C:\eth-netstats> set WS_SECRET=mysecret&& npm start

5. Start the Frontend

visit http://localhost:3000 in your web browser. If you notice that no node are listed in the monitoring dashboard. This is because no instance of geth is currently running or your eth-net-intelligence-api does not connect to the node.