monitorix-webui

Interactive web UI for Monitorix — reads RRD files directly, serves a React + Tailwind dashboard with real interactive charts.

npx monitorix-webui

That's it. Point it at a host running Monitorix, get a modern dashboard with zoom, pan, time-range filters, summary cards, and live refresh — without touching Monitorix itself.

Why

Monitorix ships static PNG graphs by design. They're great, but you can't zoom, pan, hover, or filter by time. This tool keeps Monitorix's lightweight Perl/RRD backend completely untouched and adds an opt-in interactive UI on top:

• Reads /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf (including conf.d/ overrides)
• Reads *.rrd files from /var/lib/monitorix/
• Auto-discovers every enabled module — no per-module config required
• Tier 1 (curated): system, kern, proc, net, fs — polished charts + summary cards
• Tier 2 (fallback): every other enabled module — auto-grouped DSes, generic styling

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• rrdtool binary in PATH (already installed if you're running Monitorix)
• Read access to the Monitorix data directory (run as the monitorix user, or as a member of its group)

Default port is 8088. Port 8080 is intentionally avoided — Monitorix's built-in httpd_builtin daemon listens on 8080 by default.

Install / run

# Run without installing
npx monitorix-webui

# Install globally
npm install -g monitorix-webui
monitorix-webui

# With basic auth + custom port
npx monitorix-webui --port 9000 --auth admin:s3cret

# Custom paths
npx monitorix-webui \
  --conf /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf \
  --rrd-path /var/lib/monitorix \
  --port 8088

# All env vars
MONITORIX_CONF=/etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf \
MONITORIX_RRD_PATH=/var/lib/monitorix \
PORT=8088 BASIC_AUTH=admin:s3cret \
npx monitorix-webui

CLI flags

| Flag | Env | Default | |----------------------|----------------------|--------------------------------------| | --rrd-path <dir> | MONITORIX_RRD_PATH | (read from monitorix.conf base_lib) | | --conf <file> | MONITORIX_CONF | /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf | | --port <n> | PORT | 8088 | | --host <addr> | HOST | 0.0.0.0 | | --base-path <p> | BASE_PATH | / | | --auth <user:pass> | BASIC_AUTH | (none) | | --refresh <sec> | | 60 | | --rrdtool <bin> | RRDTOOL_BIN | rrdtool | | -h, --help | | | | -v, --version | | |

Reverse proxy

Mount it under a sub-path behind nginx, Caddy, or anything else:

monitorix-webui --base-path /monitorix-ui --port 8088

location /monitorix-ui/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8088;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}

systemd unit

# /etc/systemd/system/monitorix-webui.service
[Unit]
Description=Monitorix interactive web UI
After=monitorix.service
Requires=monitorix.service

[Service]
User=monitorix
Group=monitorix
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npx -y monitorix-webui --port 8088 --auth admin:CHANGEME
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now monitorix-webui

API

The web UI is just a client over a tiny JSON API. Use it directly if you want to wire metrics into other dashboards.

| Endpoint | Description | |------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------| | GET /api/system | Hostname, rrdtool version, baseLib | | GET /api/catalog | Discovered modules + chart specs (cached 60s)| | GET /api/series/:module/:chartId | Time-series JSON for one curated chart | | GET /api/latest/:module?ds=a,b,c | Most-recent value per DS | | GET /api/raw/:module | Flat dump of every DS in a module's RRD | | GET /healthz | Liveness |

from and to query params accept anything rrdtool xport accepts: now, now-6h, now-1d, now-7d, ISO-8601, or unix epoch.

Architecture

                ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
                │  monitorix-webui (Node 20+, Hono)    │
                │  ├─ Apache-style monitorix.conf parser
                │  ├─ rrdtool xport / info bridge      │
                │  ├─ 60s catalog cache                │
                │  └─ static SPA (React + Tailwind v4) │
                └──────────────────────────────────────┘
                                  ▲   reads
                                  │
                  ┌───────────────┴────────────────┐
                  │  /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf │
                  │  /var/lib/monitorix/*.rrd      │
                  └────────────────────────────────┘
                                  ▲   spawns
                                  │
                                  rrdtool (existing system binary)

Zero native dependencies. Single Node process. Designed to live alongside Monitorix on the same host.

Development

git clone https://github.com/mrbeandev/monitorix-webui
cd monitorix-webui
npm install

# Backend on :8088
npm run dev:server -- --conf /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf

# Frontend with HMR on :5173 (proxies /api to :8088)
npm run dev:webui

# Production build (webui → packages/server/static, server → dist/)
npm run build
node packages/server/dist/cli.js

Roadmap

• [ ] More Tier-1 curated metadata (netstat, disk, process, mail, common services)
• [ ] URL-state for time-range + selected module (shareable links)
• [ ] CSV export per chart
• [ ] Multi-host dashboard
• [ ] Dark/light theme toggle (currently dark-only)
• [ ] Per-DS color overrides via config

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome. For larger changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

License

MIT