Linux – how can I limit per user bandwidth

bandwidthdebianlinux

To summarise:
I have a dedicated server with a few friends running a torrent client with web gui. Each user is running a client under their username on the server so downloads go in their user dir, and only they have access to their own files etc.

How can I monitor and limit the bandwidth per month on a per user basis?

I was thinking there must be a way using iptables maybe. And by monitoring the bandwidth used by all processes of user X. And if they have used more then their monthly allowed bandwidth of Y GB, they get a message saying that and networking gets blocked for their torrent client, or the client gets killed completely. I also thought about squid, but seeing as it would be using multiple torrent clients this could use a lot of server resources…

I am using debian lenny.

I'm not sure how to do this…

would this be possible at all? I am grateful for even just partial solutions to this…

Best Answer

Just to add on the above question.

You could use iptables with user matching to color the packets like so:

iptables -t mangle -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m owner --uid-owner someuser -j MARK --set-mark 100

And then use 'tc' to limit on a per user basis.

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How to monitor total outgoing bandwidth usage on a per-user basis

You need to parse the logs with a custom script. You'll also likely want a custom log format (to capture the VirtualHost names.) You can either parse the logs daily (or hourly/weekly) or you can run the logs through a script as it happens.

LogFormat "%B \"%{Host}i\"" myformat
CustomLog "|/usr/local/bin/apachebwmeter" myformat

It's up to you to write /usr/local/bin/apachebwmeter. Make sure to coalesce the domain names (www.example.com and example.com are the same user, you might have other variations depending on your environment.) Keep in mind that %B does NOT include HTTP headers, so it'll be approximate.

-Dave

Best Answer

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How to monitor total outgoing bandwidth usage on a per-user basis

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