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-# Remote monitoring with StatsD
+# Remote monitoring and metrics visualization
 
-StatsD allows you to receive and aggregate metrics from a wide range of applications and retransmit them to the backend of your choice.
-This enables you to create nice and readable dashboards containing all the information you need on your fuzzer instances.
-No need to write your own statistics parsing system, deploy and maintain it to all your instances, sync with your graph rendering system...
+AFL++ can send out metrics as StatsD messages. For remote monitoring and
+visualization of the metrics, you can set up a tool chain. For example, with
+Prometheus and Grafana. All tools are free and open source.
 
-The available metrics are :
+This enables you to create nice and readable dashboards containing all the
+information you need on your fuzzer instances. There is no need to write your
+own statistics parsing system, deploy and maintain it to all your instances, and
+sync with your graph rendering system.
+
+Compared to the default integrated UI of AFL++, this can help you to visualize
+trends and the fuzzing state over time. You might be able to see when the
+fuzzing process has reached a state of no progress and visualize what are the
+"best strategies" for your targets (according to your own criteria). You can do
+so without logging into each instance individually.
+
+![example visualization with Grafana](resources/statsd-grafana.png)
+
+This is an example visualization with Grafana. The dashboard can be imported
+with [this JSON template](resources/grafana-afl++.json).
+
+## AFL++ metrics and StatsD
+
+StatsD allows you to receive and aggregate metrics from a wide range of
+applications and retransmit them to a backend of your choice.
+
+From AFL++, StatsD can receive the following metrics:
+- cur_path
 - cycle_done
 - cycles_wo_finds
+- edges_found
 - execs_done
 - execs_per_sec
-- paths_total
+- havoc_expansion
+- max_depth
 - paths_favored
 - paths_found
 - paths_imported
-- max_depth
-- cur_path
+- paths_total
 - pending_favs
 - pending_total
-- variable_paths
+- slowest_exec_ms
+- total_crashes
 - unique_crashes
 - unique_hangs
-- total_crashes
-- slowest_exec_ms
-- edges_found
 - var_byte_count
-- havoc_expansion
+- variable_paths
 
-Compared to the default integrated UI, these metrics give you the opportunity to visualize trends and fuzzing state over time.
-By doing so, you might be able to see when the fuzzing process has reached a state of no progress, visualize what are the "best strategies"
-(according to your own criteria) for your targets, etc. And doing so without requiring to log into each instance manually.
+Depending on your StatsD server, you will be able to monitor, trigger alerts, or
+perform actions based on these metrics (for example: alert on slow exec/s for a
+new build, threshold of crashes, time since last crash > X, and so on).
 
-An example visualisation may look like the following:
-![StatsD Grafana](resources/statsd-grafana.png)
+## Setting environment variables in AFL++
 
-*Notes: The exact same dashboard can be imported with [this JSON template](resources/grafana-afl++.json).*
+1. To enable the StatsD metrics collection on your fuzzer instances, set the
+   environment variable `AFL_STATSD=1`. By default, AFL++ will send the metrics
+   over UDP to 127.0.0.1:8125.
 
-## How to use
+2. To enable tags for each metric based on their format (banner and
+   afl_version), set the environment variable `AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR`. By
+   default, no tags will be added to the metrics.
 
-To enable the StatsD reporting on your fuzzer instances, you need to set the environment variable `AFL_STATSD=1`.
+    The available values are the following:
+    -  `dogstatsd`
+    -  `influxdb`
+    -  `librato`
+    -  `signalfx`
 
-Setting `AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR` to the provider of your choice will assign tags / labels to each metric based on their format.
-The possible values are  `dogstatsd`, `librato`, `signalfx` or `influxdb`.
-For more information on these env vars, check out `docs/env_variables.md`.
+    For more information on environment variables, see
+    [env_variables.md](env_variables.md).
 
-The simplest way of using this feature is to use any metric provider and change the host/port of your StatsD daemon,
-with `AFL_STATSD_HOST` and `AFL_STATSD_PORT`, if required (defaults are `localhost` and port `8125`).
-To get started, here are some instructions with free and open source tools.
-The following setup is based on Prometheus, statsd_exporter and Grafana.
-Grafana here is not mandatory, but gives you some nice graphs and features.
+    Note: When using multiple fuzzer instances with StatsD it is *strongly*
+    recommended to set up `AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR` to match your StatsD server.
+    This will allow you to see individual fuzzer performance, detect bad ones,
+    and see the progress of each strategy.
 
-Depending on your setup and infrastructure, you may want to run these applications not on your fuzzer instances.
-Only one instance of these 3 application is required for all your fuzzers.
+3. Optional: To set the host and port of your StatsD daemon, set
+   `AFL_STATSD_HOST` and `AFL_STATSD_PORT`. The default values are `localhost`
+   and `8125`.
 
-To simplify everything, we will use Docker and docker-compose.
-Make sure you have them both installed. On most common Linux distributions, it's as simple as:
+## Installing and setting up StatsD, Prometheus, and Grafana
 
-```sh
-curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
-sh get-docker.sh
-```
+The easiest way to install and set up the infrastructure is with Docker and
+Docker Compose.
 
-Once that's done, we can create the infrastructure.
-Create and move into the directory of your choice. This will store all the configurations files required.
-
-First, create a `docker-compose.yml` containing the following:
-```yml
-version: '3'
-
-networks:
-  statsd-net:
-    driver: bridge
-
-services:
-  prometheus:
-    image: prom/prometheus
-    container_name: prometheus
-    volumes:
-      - ./prometheus.yml:/prometheus.yml
-    command:
-      - '--config.file=/prometheus.yml'
-    restart: unless-stopped
-    ports:
-      - "9090:9090"
-    networks:
-      - statsd-net
-
-  statsd_exporter:
-    image: prom/statsd-exporter
-    container_name: statsd_exporter
-    volumes:
-      - ./statsd_mapping.yml:/statsd_mapping.yml
-    command:
-      - "--statsd.mapping-config=/statsd_mapping.yml"
-    ports:
-      - "9102:9102/tcp"
-      - "8125:9125/udp"
-    networks:
-      - statsd-net
-  
-  grafana:
-    image: grafana/grafana
-    container_name: grafana
-    restart: unless-stopped
-    ports:
-        - "3000:3000"
-    networks:
-      - statsd-net
-```
+Depending on your fuzzing setup and infrastructure, you may not want to run
+these applications on your fuzzer instances. This setup may be modified before
+use in a production environment; for example, adding passwords, creating volumes
+for storage, tweaking the metrics gathering to get host metrics (CPU, RAM, and
+so on).
 
-Then `prometheus.yml`
-```yml
-global:
-  scrape_interval:      15s
-  evaluation_interval:  15s
+For all your fuzzing instances, only one instance of Prometheus and Grafana is
+required. The
+[statsd exporter](https://registry.hub.docker.com/r/prom/statsd-exporter)
+converts the StatsD metrics to Prometheus. If you are using a provider that
+supports StatsD directly, you can skip this part of the setup."
 
-scrape_configs:
-  - job_name: 'fuzzing_metrics'
-    static_configs:
-      - targets: ['statsd_exporter:9102']
-```
+You can create and move the infrastructure files into a directory of your
+choice. The directory will store all the required configuration files.
 
-And finally `statsd_mapping.yml`
-```yml 
-mappings:
-- match: "fuzzing.*"
-  name: "fuzzing"
-  labels:
-      type: "$1"
-```
+To install and set up Prometheus and Grafana:
+
+1. Install Docker and Docker Compose:
+
+    ```sh
+    curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
+    sh get-docker.sh
+    ```
 
-Run `docker-compose up -d`.
+2. Create a `docker-compose.yml` containing the following:
 
-Everything should now be setup, you are now able to run your fuzzers with
+    ```yml
+    version: '3'
+
+    networks:
+      statsd-net:
+        driver: bridge
+
+    services:
+      prometheus:
+        image: prom/prometheus
+        container_name: prometheus
+        volumes:
+          - ./prometheus.yml:/prometheus.yml
+        command:
+          - '--config.file=/prometheus.yml'
+        restart: unless-stopped
+        ports:
+          - "9090:9090"
+        networks:
+          - statsd-net
+
+      statsd_exporter:
+        image: prom/statsd-exporter
+        container_name: statsd_exporter
+        volumes:
+          - ./statsd_mapping.yml:/statsd_mapping.yml
+        command:
+          - "--statsd.mapping-config=/statsd_mapping.yml"
+        ports:
+          - "9102:9102/tcp"
+          - "8125:9125/udp"
+        networks:
+          - statsd-net
+
+      grafana:
+        image: grafana/grafana
+        container_name: grafana
+        restart: unless-stopped
+        ports:
+            - "3000:3000"
+        networks:
+          - statsd-net
+    ```
+
+3. Create a `prometheus.yml` containing the following:
+
+    ```yml
+    global:
+      scrape_interval:      15s
+      evaluation_interval:  15s
+
+    scrape_configs:
+      - job_name: 'fuzzing_metrics'
+        static_configs:
+          - targets: ['statsd_exporter:9102']
+    ```
+
+4. Create a `statsd_mapping.yml` containing the following:
+
+    ```yml
+    mappings:
+    - match: "fuzzing.*"
+      name: "fuzzing"
+      labels:
+          type: "$1"
+    ```
+
+5. Run `docker-compose up -d`.
+
+## Running AFL++ with StatsD
+
+To run your fuzzing instances:
 
 ```
-AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR=dogstatsd AFL_STATSD=1 afl-fuzz -M test-fuzzer-1 -i i -o o ./bin/my-application @@
-AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR=dogstatsd AFL_STATSD=1 afl-fuzz -S test-fuzzer-2 -i i -o o ./bin/my-application @@
+AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR=dogstatsd AFL_STATSD=1 afl-fuzz -M test-fuzzer-1 -i i -o o [./bin/my-application] @@
+AFL_STATSD_TAGS_FLAVOR=dogstatsd AFL_STATSD=1 afl-fuzz -S test-fuzzer-2 -i i -o o [./bin/my-application] @@
 ...
-```
-
-This setup may be modified before use in a production environment. Depending on your needs: adding passwords, creating volumes for storage,
-tweaking the metrics gathering to get host metrics (CPU, RAM ...).
+```
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