How To Install dropwatch on Debian 12
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install dropwatch on Debian 12.
What is dropwatch
dropwatch is:
Dropwatch is a utility to help developers and system administrators to diagnose problems in the Linux Networking stack, specifically their ability to diagnose where packets are getting dropped. Dropwatch aims to improve on the following shortcomings:
Consolidation, or lack thereof. Currently, to check the status of dropped packets in the kernel, one needs to check at least 3 places, and possibly more: The /proc/net/snmp file, the netstat utility, the tc utility, and ethtool. Dropwatch aims to consolidate several of those checks into one tool, making it easier for a sysadmin or developer to detect lost packets
Clarity of information. Dropped packets are not obvious. A sysadmin needs to be intimately familiar with each of the above tools to understand which events or statistics correlate to a dropped packet and which do not. While that is often self evident, it is also often not. Dropwatch aims to improve that clarity.
Ambiguity. Even when a dropped packet is detected, the causes for those dropped packets are not always clear. Does a UDPInError mean the application receive buffer was full, or does it mean its checksum was bad? Dropwatch attempts to disambiguate the causes for dropped packets.
Performance. Utilities can be written to aggregate the data in the various other utilities to solve some of these problems, but such solutions require periodic polling of several interfaces, which is far from optimal, especially when lost packets are rare. This solution improves on the performance aspect by implementing a kernel feature which allows asynchronous notification of dropped packets when they happen.
There are three methods to install dropwatch on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install dropwatch Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install dropwatch using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install dropwatch
Install dropwatch Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install dropwatch using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install dropwatch
Install dropwatch 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 Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install dropwatch using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install dropwatch
How To Uninstall dropwatch on Debian 12
To uninstall only the dropwatch package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove dropwatch
Uninstall dropwatch And Its Dependencies
To uninstall dropwatch and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove dropwatch
Remove dropwatch Configurations and Data
To remove dropwatch configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge dropwatch
Remove dropwatch configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove dropwatch configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge dropwatch
Dependencies
dropwatch have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install dropwatch package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
