How to find monthly data use?[SOLVED]

[Sky Aisling]

Hello,
My goal is to find out how much data I use monthly for my internet connection.
I am considering getting a wifi hot spot to replace my cable service.
I need to know my monthly data usage in order to choose a plan from a provider such as AT&T.
Is there an existing app in Bionicpup8.0? or is there a .pet for finding data usage?
WAVE is the cable service.

Machine:
Computer Vendor: LENOVO
Product Name: 10117
Version: Lenovo H535
Serial Number: ES13191202
UUID: D0715C4C-E225-11E3-A5D6-0B003C981800

Distro:
Distro: bionicpup64 8.0
Window Manager: JWM v2.3.7
Desktop Start: xwin jwm

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Sky

[JakeSFR]

I might be wrong, but IIRC there was some mechanism for that in Puppy, like in tray or something...

Anyway, if not, vnstat is the way to go: https://humdi.net/vnstat/
I started to use it recently, just out of curiosity. It's OOTB in Fatdog64.
See if it's also in your Puppy's repository.

HTH
Greetings!

[Sky Aisling]

@JakeSFR
I have solved the question. I finally found the chart provided by WAVE cable provider that tells me the amount of data I've used from their service.
Sky

[mikewalsh]

@Sky Aisling :-

Hallo, Sky.

I know exactly what you need. A few years back, I was in the position of having a fairly low monthly data cap on our IP's broadband plan, and needed a way to keep an eye on exactly what I was using. Their penalties for going over the set amount were a bit on the steep side!

So; back in 2014, I did some scouting around to see what I could find. I found a brilliant wee app, coded by a guy name of Rob Dawson, here in the UK, which did exactly what I wanted. It's called

BitMeterOS

.....and you can find the forum thread I started to 'share' it a year later, over at the old forum:-

http://oldforum.puppylinux.com/puppy/vi ... a143bf9f5d

It's a small .deb package, which displays via a tab in your browser; quite fitting, considering that the browser is the source of most of your data consumption anyway. If you go to Rob's CodeBox website, there's even an interactive 'demo', so you can "try before you buy", as it were!

http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeteros

(It's completely free, of course.)

Go to the above CodeBox link, and click on the 'Demo' link on the left-hand side. What you will see (using 'dummy' data generated by Rob's server) is exactly what you will see in a browser tab when you have it installed.

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If you decide to give it a go, take my advice; go for the older, 0.7.6 version. This only measures a single OS's usage at a time, but it is 100% rock-solid stable. The newer 0.8.0, by means of using clever network commands & stuff, is supposed to be able to concatenate totals from multiple OSs.....but Rob was experimenting with a new type of database when he wrote this, it wasn't very stable, and it crashes. A LOT. And he never bothered to re-write it, as he'd moved on to newer projects.

Makes far more sense to stick with the stable version that works!

----------------------------------------

Once installed, you bring up BitMeter's web-interface by entering the following URL:-

http://localhost:2605/index.html

(Note; this is good old-fashioned "http", NOT "https". It's not needed for a purely 'local', internal connection.) Once the URL is 'up', it makes sense to bookmark it, so you can call it up whenever you want. I have all my browsers set to open up with two tabs displaying; BitMeterOS in one.....the Puppy Forum in the other.

This will give you access to all BitMeter's functions. For your purpose, the 'Summary' tab is probably the most relevant one.

I don't really need this anymore; we switched IPs a few years back, and now have an unlimited connection.....but I keep it around, 'cos it only occupies a few hundred Kb, and is still remarkably useful. Hope that helps!

Mike.

[Sky Aisling]

@mikewalsh
RE: BitMeter
Yes! Thank you, Mike.
My senior brain finally remembered.
You gave me this app many years ago.
I used it effectively in Tahrpup 6.0, if I recall.

WAVE cable tells me that I use c.a. 150GB per month. That's double what I would normally use, but, the pandemic...
I'm using Firefox.esr browser as Firefox is the only browser I can find that will read certain Youtube movies.
Firefox is such a hog of resources.
I've put SeaMonkey in as default on BionicPup 8.0.
I use SeaMonkey for most common maintenance duties, like checking email and general use.

Who knew we'd be still in this COVID-19 lockdown stage for almost a year now.

Sky

[Sky Aisling]

@mikewalsh
Hi Mike,

I'm a bit confused.
Here is what BitmeterOS shows for February useage.
Here is what WAVE cable shows for February useage.
Why are the numbers so different?
I'm looking for GB numbers.

Sky

[mikewalsh]

@Sky Aisling :-

The reason the numbers are so different is simple; BitMeterOS will only start to accumulate information from the day it's installed. No way it can know about your usage before it became a part of your system, y'see.

It's not reading information from some 'system' file.....it's reading from its own, built-in database. So it can only start to display information from the moment it's installed.

You won't begin to see full-month usage figures until the end of next month. I think my record for continuous operation of any given install of this was a little over 4 years.....and in all that time, it performed flawlessly.

Mike.