Mikrotik The Dude on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server (Step-By-Step)

On my network I have a single, low power server, running on my single highsite. This server runs Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS, and it does not have the oomph to virtualize windows for the sake of dude. To this end I have deployed The Dude running under Wine.

Dude is a network monitoring application by Mikrotik that is excellent for monitoring Mikrotik and other SNMP enabled devices.

We will not be compiling anything, opting rather for the easier apt-get installs where possible.

This tutorial is based off the instructions from the Mikrotik Wiki, but adapted for Ubuntu 12.04 and The Dude Version 4.0 Beta 3

Please Note:

I will be running The Dude on a headless server, ie. this machine has no desktop manager installed. I will also be setting up The Dude to run as a Linux Service so that it starts up with the server.

Prerequisites:

Make sure you are running as root
The first thing to install is the Wine abstraction layer:

# apt-get install wine

Next, you want to install is the Xvfb virtual frame buffer. This is to provide the graphical environment to run The Dude's installer

# apt-get install xvfb

Now install the x11vnc server:

# apt-get install x11vnc

Download The Dude installer, at the time of writing, the latest version is 4.0 Beta 3:

# wget http://download.mikrotik.com/dude/4.0beta3/dude-install-4.0beta3.exe

The Dude Installation:

Start a virtual display using xvfb and enable vnc access:

Xvfb :1 -screen 0 800x600x16 &
x11vnc -display :1 -bg -forever

You can now start the Dude installation.

export DISPLAY=:1
export WINEPREFIX=/srv/dude
wine dude-install*.exe

Use your favourite VNC client to connect to your Dude server, this will present you with The Dude install screen, the setup is fairly simple, you can simply click next until the install is finished:

Click close to finish the install. You may note that this also ends the process on the server once the install is done.

Running Dude as a Linux Server:

Create the file /etc/init.d/dude

# vim /etc/init.d/dude

And paste the following code (taken from Mikrotik Wiki):

#!/bin/bash

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: dude
# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Dude Server
### END INIT INFO

action=${1}

# ----------------------------------------------
# User Options
# ----------------------------------------------
xvfb_pidfile='/var/run/dude-xvfb.pid'
wine_pidfile='/var/run/dude-wine.pid'
virtual_display=':1'
dude_path='/srv/dude'
# ----------------------------------------------

export DISPLAY=$virtual_display
export WINEPREFIX=$dude_path

start ()
{
echo -n 'Starting Dude virtual display: '
Xvfb $virtual_display &> /dev/null &
echo $! > $xvfb_pidfile
echo 'ok'
echo -n 'Starting Dude Server: '
sleep 5
wine 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Dude\dude.exe' --server &> /dev/null &
echo $! > $wine_pidfile
echo 'ok'
}

stop ()
{
echo -n 'Stopping Dude Server: '
kill $(cat $wine_pidfile)
rm -f $wine_pidfile
sleep 5
echo 'ok'
echo -n 'Stopping Dude virtual display: '
kill $(cat $xvfb_pidfile)
rm -f $xvfb_pidfile
echo 'ok'
}

case "$action" in
start)
start
;;

stop)
stop
;;

*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
;;
esac

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Make the init script executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/dude

Start The Dude service:

/etc/init.d/dude start

Add service to startup:

update-rc.d dude defaults

You can now connect to your Dude server using the standard Dude client on your Windows PC