Expose your local Netdata Instance

This tutorial will show you how you can expose your netdata instance, so that you can monitor your localhost from anywhere around the world.

1. Installing netdata

Netdata can be installed in various ways, you can follow official netdata install documentation (here). However in this tutorial we shall be using docker image to run netdata ( see netdata with docker ).

$ docker run -d --name=netdata_localxpose \
  -p 19999:19999 \
  -v netdatalib:/var/lib/netdata \
  -v netdatacache:/var/cache/netdata \
  -v /etc/passwd:/host/etc/passwd:ro \
  -v /etc/group:/host/etc/group:ro \
  -v /proc:/host/proc:ro \
  -v /sys:/host/sys:ro \
  -v /etc/os-release:/host/etc/os-release:ro \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --cap-add SYS_PTRACE \
  --security-opt apparmor=unconfined \
  netdata/netdata

You may add/remove the the bind mounts -v as per your necessity.

You should see your netdata container running.

docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND              CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                      NAMES
83ef28036e03        netdata/netdata     "/usr/sbin/run.sh"   1 minutes ago      Up 1 minutes       0.0.0.0:19999->19999/tcp   netdata_localxpose

Once the docker container is created you can visit the netdata web UI at http://localhost:19999.

2. Expose netdata port

After we have successfully installed and started netdata, we can start to expose port 19999.

19999 is the default port of netdata web, you can change it by editing the netdata.conf file.

[web]
   default port = 19999   #Change the default port here.

Once done, you can proceed to forward the port with LocalXpose.

loclx tunnel http  --basic-auth user:pass --to :19999
# We can use localxpose's basic auth feature to set a password authentication.

loclx tunnel http  --basic-auth user:pass --to :19999
✓ Creating HTTP tunnel...

Tunneling http://3ftj8wzsjmlc.loclx.io --> :19999
Tunneling https://3ftj8wzsjmlc.loclx.io --> :19999

If you want to use your custom domain name or use your own SSL certs please follow ( create custom domain name & make lets encrypt certificate )

3. Use netdata

Once you finish tunneling, you will receive a LocalXpose domain as in the screenshot above. Use the provided domain to view your netdata web UI.

The server should prompt for authentication, here you will provide the authentication credentials you have passed with --basic-auth option.

Once you provide your credentials clock on 'Sign In'. You should see your netdata web dashboard.

This is how you can expose your local netdata web server & access it from anywhere around the world.