bandwhich

This is a CLI utility for displaying current network utilization by process, connection and remote IP/hostname

Table of contents

• bandwhich
  • Table of contents
  • Project status
  • How does it work?
  • Installation
    • Download a prebuilt binary
    • Arch Linux
    • Nix/NixOS
    • Void Linux
    • Fedora
    • macOS/Linux (using Homebrew)
    • macOS (using MacPorts)
    • FreeBSD
    • Building from source using cargo
    • OpenWRT
  • Post install (Linux)
    • 1. setcap
      • Capabilities explained
    • 2. sudo (or alternative)
  • Post install (Windows)
  • Usage
  • raw_mode
  • Contributing
  • License

Project status

This project is in passive maintenance. Critical issues will be addressed, but no new features are being worked on. However, this is due to a lack of funding and/or manpower more than anything else, so pull requests are more than welcome.

For more details, see The Future of Bandwhich #275.

How does it work?

bandwhich sniffs a given network interface and records IP packet size, cross referencing it with the /proc filesystem on linux, lsof on macOS, or using WinApi on windows. It is responsive to the terminal window size, displaying less info if there is no room for it. It will also attempt to resolve ips to their host name in the background using reverse DNS on a best effort basis.

Installation

Downstream packaging status

Download a prebuilt binary

If you're on linux, you can download the generic binary from the releases.

Arch Linux

pacman -S bandwhich

Nix/NixOS

bandwhich is available in nixpkgs, and can be installed, for example, with nix-env:

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.bandwhich

Void Linux

xbps-install -S bandwhich

Fedora

bandwhich is available in COPR, and can be installed via DNF:

sudo dnf copr enable atim/bandwhich -y && sudo dnf install bandwhich

macOS/Linux (using Homebrew)

brew install bandwhich

macOS (using MacPorts)

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install bandwhich

FreeBSD

pkg install bandwhich

or

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/bandwhich && make install clean

Building from source using cargo

bandwhich can be installed using the Rust package manager, cargo. It might be in your distro repositories if you're on linux, or you can install it via rustup. You can find additional installation instructions here.

The minimum supported Rust version is 1.70.0.

cargo install bandwhich

OpenWRT

To install bandwhich on OpenWRT, you'll need to compile a binary that would fit its processor architecture. This might mean you would have to cross compile if, for example, you're working on an x86_64 and the OpenWRT is installed on an arm7. Here is an example of cross compiling in this situation:

• Check the processor architecture of your router by using uname -m
• Clone the bandwhich repository git clone https://github.com/imsnif/bandwhich
• Install cross using cargo install cross
• build the bandwhich package using cross build --target armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf
• Copy the binary files from target/armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf/debug/bandwhich to the router using scp by running scp bandwhich root@192.168.1.1:~/ (here, 192.168.1.1 would be the IP address of your router).
• Finally enter the router using ssh and run the binary directly with ./bandwhich

Post install (Linux)

Since bandwhich sniffs network packets, it requires elevated privileges. On Linux, there are two main ways to accomplish this:

1. setcap

• Permanently allow the bandwhich binary its required privileges (called "capabilities" in Linux).
• Do this if you want to give all unprivileged users full access to bandwhich's monitoring capabilities.
  • This is the recommended setup for single user machines, or if all users are trusted.
  • This is not recommended if you want to ensure users cannot see others' traffic.

# assign capabilities
sudo setcap cap_sys_ptrace,cap_dac_read_search,cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+ep $(command -v bandwhich)
# run as unprivileged user
bandwhich

Capabilities explained

• cap_sys_ptrace,cap_dac_read_search: allow access to /proc/<pid>/fd/, so that bandwhich can determine which open port belongs to which process.
• cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin: allow capturing packets on your system.

2. sudo (or alternative)

• Require privilege escalation every time.
• Do this if you are an administrator of a multi-user environment.

sudo bandwhich

Note that if your installation method installed bandwhich to somewhere in your home directory (you can check with command -v bandwhich), you may get a command not found error. This is because in many distributions, sudo by default does not keep your user's $PATH for safety concerns.

To overcome this, you can do any one of the following:

1. make sudo preserve your $PATH environment variable;
2. explicitly set $PATH while running bandwhich: sudo env "PATH=$PATH" bandwhich;
3. pass the full path to sudo: sudo $(command -v bandwhich).

Post install (Windows)

You might need to first install npcap for capturing packets on Windows.

Usage

USAGE:
    bandwhich [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS:
    -a, --addresses            Show remote addresses table only
    -c, --connections          Show connections table only
    -h, --help                 Prints help information
    -n, --no-resolve           Do not attempt to resolve IPs to their hostnames
    -p, --processes            Show processes table only
    -r, --raw                  Machine friendlier output
    -s, --show-dns             Show DNS queries
    -t, --total-utilization    Show total (cumulative) usages
    -V, --version              Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -i, --interface <interface>    The network interface to listen on, eg. eth0
    -d, --dns-server <dns-server>    A dns server ip to use instead of the system default

raw_mode

bandwhich also supports an easier-to-parse mode that can be piped or redirected to a file. For example, try:

bandwhich --raw | grep firefox

Contributing

Contributions of any kind are very welcome. If you'd like a new feature (or found a bug), please open an issue or a PR.

To set up your development environment:

1. Clone the project
2. cargo run, or if you prefer cargo run -- -i <network interface name> (you can often find out the name with ifconfig or iwconfig). You might need root privileges to run this application, so be sure to use (for example) sudo.

To run tests: cargo test

Note that at the moment the tests do not test the os layer (anything in the os folder).

If you are stuck, unsure about how to approach an issue or would like some guidance, you are welcome to contact: aram@poor.dev

License

MIT