lighthouse

lighthouse is a network monitor designed keep you aware of what's happening on your home network.

lighthouse periodically sends out ARP requests to all hosts within a subnet and waits for responses. A responsive host is considered online, and a non-responsive host is considered offline after a (configurable) amount of time has passed. As some devices can't be relied on to reply to ARP requests in a timely fashion, if it looks like a device is about go offline an ICMP ping is sent to it to try to provoke a response, as a last-ditch effort.

lighthouse was born out of frustration with the Fingbox's increasing tendency to gate new features behind their premium offering while persistently upgrade-nagging whenever the app is opened.

Features

• Track devices on the local network using ARP and ICMP
• Notify when devices go offline or come online
• Notify when devices stay online for longer than a specific amount of time
• Notify when an unknown device joins the network
• Service (port) scanning with notifications when new services are found
• Send ICMP packets to devices before they go offline to provoke a response as a last-ditch effort
• Assign icons to devices for easier identification
• Track DHCP-provided device hostname for easier identification
• User roles: admin, editor, viewer
• Support static mappings to work around dodgy devices like repeaters that rewrite ARP packets
• Passive mode which does not actively send out any packets
• Device vendor lookup using gopacket's db with macvendors fallback (requires API key)
• Support for devices with multiple adapters with different MAC addresses e.g. a laptop with ethernet & Wi-Fi
• Activity history, notification history, and audit log
• Minimal JavaScript (but not none)
• No remote dependencies
• Easy deployment with a single binary

Deployment (binary)

The simplest way to run lighthouse is with the compiled binary, a .env file, and a MySQL or MariaDB database.

Permission is needed to send raw packets so it needs to run either as root (not recommended) or with capability cap_net_raw.

just make
sudo setcap cap_net_raw+ep dist/lighthouse

Set up the .env file (see Configuration), then run with --env.

dist/lighthouse --env .env

Deployment (docker)

Docker is also an option. In this case you'll need the built image, a .env file, and a MySQL or MariaDB database. Because it needs to run with network_mode: host (to be able to monitor the host network) the database server can be installed directly on the host or as an additional service placed in compose.yml (which should also be network_mode: host).

  db:
    image: mariadb:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      MARIADB_USER: anon
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: anon
    volumes:
      - state:/var/lib/mysql
volumes:
  state:

Configure the .env.prod file to connect to it (see Configuration), e.g.,

DB_USERNAME=anon
DB_PASSWORD=anon
DB_PROTOCOL=tcp
DB_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1:3306

Note: The compose.yml file references .env.prod instead of .env.

Build the image and run it.

just up

Access

The default credentials if DEFAULT_ROOT_PASS or DEFAULT_ANON_PASS is not set is root:root and anon:anon, respectively.

Configuration

lighthouse is configured with a .env file. Only the options necessary for startup are configured via the environment, and the rest are configured with the web interface.

Check out .env.example for a quick reference or continue reading for a more comprehensive rundown.

MODE

• Required: yes
• Value: development or production

The execution mode. Unless you're working on lighthouse, this should always be set to production.

HOST

• Required: yes
• Value: an IP address e.g., 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0

The interface to bind to.

0.0.0.0 binds to all interfaces allowing access for all hosts, while 127.0.0.1 binds to the loopback interface and restricts access to the local system. Other values will bind to that specific interface. The exact value to set here will depend on your network configuration.

PORT

• Required: only if MODE is production
• Value: port, e.g., 1337

The port to listen on. If not specified in development mode then a random port will be used.

LOG_TYPE

• Required: yes
• Value: all, disk, stderr, or none

LOG_PATH

• Required: only if LOG_TYPE is all or disk
• Value: path e.g., logs/lighthouse.log

DB_NAME

• Required: yes
• Value: database name e.g., lighthouse

DB_USERNAME

• Required: yes
• Value: username e.g., anon

DB_PASSWORD

• Required: no
• Value: password e.g., anon
• Default: (empty)

DB_PROTOCOL

• Required: no
• Value: tcp or unix
• Default: tcp

DB_ADDRESS

• Required: no
• Value: host and port combination e.g., 127.0.0.1:3306, or a unix socket path e.g. /run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
• Default: 127.0.0.1:3306

DB_CHARSET

• Required: no
• Value: character set e.g., utf8mb4
• Default: utf8mb4

DB_TIMEZONE

• Required: no
• Value: timezone e.g., UTC, Europe/London
• Default: UTC

LIVE_RELOAD

• Required: no
• Value: true, 1, or yes to enable, anything else to disable
• Default: false

DEFAULT_ROOT_PASS

• Required: no
• Value: password e.g., root
• Default: root

DEFAULT_ANON_PASS

• Required: no
• Value: password e.g., anon
• Default: anon

TRUSTED_PROXIES

• Required: no
• Value: comma-separated list of IP addresses e.g. 127.0.0.1

If running behind a reverse proxy then set this to the proxy's IP address(es). This will ensure the correct IP address is displayed in the audit log.

Mail

Mail is optional, but without it the only way to see notifications is to manually check using the web interface. Once up and running go to settings and configure the SMTP settings.

Tests

Run tests with just test.

Contributions

Open an issue or send a pull request.

Licence

GPLv3.