Running ntopng from Source on Raspberry Pi 5 (ARM64)

Date: June 4th, 2025
Category: Network/Security
Backlink: LibreNMS Docker Deployment on Raspberry Pi 5

Overview

This guide details how I installed and configured the open-source network traffic monitor ntopng on my Raspberry Pi 5 (ARM64). The goal was to gain full LAN visibility using packet inspection via the Pi’s wireless interface. LibreNMS is already in place for SNMP-based metrics, and ntopng complements it by showing real-time traffic flows and bandwidth usage.

Why Build from Source?

The official Docker images for ntop/ntopng were built for amd64, which is incompatible with the Pi 5's arm64 architecture. Since no prebuilt stable ARM image was available, I opted to build ntopng from source.

Install Prerequisites

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y \
  build-essential cmake libtool autoconf automake pkg-config \
  libzmq3-dev libsqlite3-dev libhiredis-dev libmaxminddb-dev \
  libpcap-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev libnghttp2-dev \
  libmariadb-dev-compat libmariadb-dev libnats-dev libcap-dev \
  redis git

Clone and Build nDPI

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/ntop/nDPI.git
cd nDPI
./autogen.sh
make

Clone and Build ntopng

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/ntop/ntopng.git
cd ntopng
./configure
make
sudo make install

Create Systemd Service File

# /etc/systemd/system/ntopng.service

[Unit]
Description=NtopNG Community Edition (custom build)
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ntopng --dont-change-user --interface=wlan0 --http-port=3000
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/ntopng
User=root
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and Start Service

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/ntopng
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ntopng
sudo systemctl start ntopng

Web Access

Open your browser to:
http://<Pi5-IP>:3000
In my case: http://192.168.1.174:3000

If the page doesn’t load, check:

sudo systemctl status ntopng
sudo journalctl -u ntopng --no-pager