output in mb about vnstat

[vergoh]

That's a good question and I now realize that there's no obvious way of getting that sort of output without having the automatically adjusting unit already included. Originally, --oneline was implemented for scripting purposes but it lacks the possibility of getting all output in bytes instead of some automatic unit. It's nice for anything that displays the values directly but clumsy if some comparisons or calculations need to be done. That's something I'll have to fix in the next version.

There's however plenty of other output options to play with that are somewhat easy to parse depending on the used script or programming language. Usually, one of --json, --xml or --exportdb provides the necessary information without too much parsing. At least with Python, importing the --json output makes the task trivial but the same output isn't that nice to parse with a shell script.

Here's what I came up with for bash etc. that will continue to work even with version 2.0:
vnstat --xml m | egrep "month id.*$(date +"<year>%Y</year><month>%m</month>")" | cut -d\> -f9 | cut -d\< -f1

That will give you the monthly received data in kilobytes in vnStat versions 1.x (those that support --xml) and in bytes in version 2.x (none released yet).

A simpler version for versionx 1.x for getting "latest month":
vnstat --xml m | grep 'month id=' | head -n 1 | cut -d\> -f9 | cut -d\< -f1

Same for 2.x (the dump order is different):
vnstat --xml m | grep 'month id=' | tail -n 1 | cut -d\> -f9 | cut -d\< -f1

[Michel001]

Thanks for the reply.

I have 1.11 running. but it seems that i get no output.
i will try to update to 1.16 and see if it makes a difference.

[Michel001]

i have tried to update. (ubuntu 14.04)
did wget for 1.16
make didn't work.
i had to sudo apt-get build-dep vnstat
./configure
make install
it ran but still vnstat -v shows 1.11
output remains the same.

[vergoh]

Using ./configure without any parameters will cause the binaries to be installed to directories that aren't within the PATH by default. If you still have the source directory available where you executed those commands then start with make uninstall to remove those binaries that ended up in wrong locations. The execute ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc && make as instructed right at the beginning of the INSTALL file followed by make install. That should get the binary locations right.

The extra parameter support for --xml was added in version 1.14 which would explain why the command didn't work with 1.11.

[Michel001]

Thank you !!

i am getting the output now.