SNMP, automatic backups, per-second log and security updates
Updated 27 Oct 2026Tools for running Castreon in a network operations centre: an SNMP agent for your monitoring system, automatic backups, a per-second log of every channel for investigating short drops, and security updates of the operating system.
Available since Castreon 3.0.0. SNMP is in the Enterprise edition; backups, the per-second log and security updates are in all editions.
SNMP
Settings → SNMP:
- Enabled — Castreon answers SNMP v1 / v2c read requests (GET, GETNEXT, GETBULK). It is read-only: nothing can be changed over SNMP.
- Community — the read password. Do not use
public, the first one anyone tries. - Address —
host:port, default0.0.0.0:161(UDP). Open the port in the firewall only for your monitoring servers. - Allowed addresses — IPs or networks, comma separated; empty = anyone who knows the community.
- Contact (sysContact), Location (sysLocation), and Object root — the OID of the Castreon branch (empty = the default).
Download the MIB gives you CASTREON-MIB to load into your monitoring system. It describes:
- the server — version, number of channels, running and in error, clients, CPU and memory, active alerts, DVB adapters and how many are locked;
- a channel table — name, slug, state, bitrate, frames per second, restarts, clients, source in use, uptime, health, CPU, alerts;
- an adapter table — name, state, signal, SNR, bitrate, TR 101 290 priority 1 / 2 / 3 errors, BER and uncorrected blocks.
The standard system group (sysDescr, sysUpTime, sysName…) answers too. The section shows how many requests were answered and how many were refused (wrong community or address not allowed).
Automatic backups
Settings → Backup & Restore → Automatic backup:
- Every (hours) — 0 = off; Starting at — the time of the first backup of the day (empty = any time);
- How many to keep — older copies are deleted;
- Directory — an absolute path; empty = the
backupsfolder in the data directory. Point it to a different disk or a mounted network share, so a copy survives the loss of the server's disk.
A backup is a consistent copy of the database (configuration, channels, users, reports) made with the service running, like the Download backup button. The list shows the files with their time and size, to Download or Delete; Back up now makes one at once. Restoring works as before — see Backup and restore.
Per-second log
On a channel's page, Per-second log → Download CSV gives the last hour of that channel, one line per second: state, source in use, bitrate, frames per second, speed, frames, dropped and duplicated frames, CPU. When a viewer reports “it froze at 14:32”, you can see exactly what the channel did in that second — and whether it switched to a backup source. The same data is in the API: GET /api/v1/channels/{id}/seconds (?last=N seconds, ?format=csv).
Operating system and security updates
Castreon installs on Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04, Debian 12 and Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux or RHEL 9. On RHEL-like systems the installer adds EPEL and sets the SELinux labels for /opt/castreon; if firewalld is running, it prints the command that opens the panel port.
Run the installer with SECURITY_UPDATES=1 to turn on automatic security updates of the operating system (unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu / Debian, dnf-automatic on RHEL-like systems):
curl -fsSL 'https://…/install/…' | sudo SECURITY_UPDATES=1 bash
Settings → Updates shows the system and whether security updates are installed automatically, with the command to turn them on when they are off. Castreon's own updates stay as before — from the panel, when you choose.