How To Install flow-tools on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install flow-tools on Ubuntu 18.04.
What is flow-tools
flow-tools is:
Flow-tools is library and a collection of programs used to collect, send, process, and generate reports from NetFlow data. The tools can be used together on a single server or distributed to multiple servers for large deployments. The flow-tools library provides an API for development of custom applications for NetFlow export versions 1,5,6 and the 14 currently defined version 8 subversions. A Perl and Python interface have been contributed and are included in the package.
A NetFlow is network traffic information exported (via UDP) to an external machine. The external machine processes such information to produce network traffic accounting, network billing, network monitoring, etc.
There are three methods to install flow-tools on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install flow-tools Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install flow-tools using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install flow-tools
Install flow-tools Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install flow-tools using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install flow-tools
Install flow-tools Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install flow-tools using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install flow-tools
How To Uninstall flow-tools on Ubuntu 18.04
To uninstall only the flow-tools package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove flow-tools
Uninstall flow-tools And Its Dependencies
To uninstall flow-tools and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove flow-tools
Remove flow-tools Configurations and Data
To remove flow-tools configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge flow-tools
Remove flow-tools configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove flow-tools configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge flow-tools
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install flow-tools package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
