Friday 18 April 2008

Conky : System monitoring eye candy

[This is not really news, but I thought I would keep a record just in case for future reference.]
Recently I came across this nifty utility called conky, which displays information about the system on the desktop. It's light-weight and highly customizable. Everything is controlled via the .conkyrc file in the home directory, and the settings are quite intuitive.

Installing conky is a breeze. Just grab the source from http://conky.sourceforge.net/ and do the make dance.
tar -jxvf conky-1.5.1.tar.bz2
cd conky-1.5.1
./configure
make
sudo make install


To run conky with the default settings, just type
conky

My Fedora 8 system by default didn't have X double buffering enabled. If you start to see some flicker or if the text gets garbled, open up xorg.conf and add the following line to the Modules section.
Load "dbe" Restart X afterwards to enable the setting.

http://conky.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html lists several conky configurations with screenshots. Just download what you fancy and save it in the home directory as .conkyrc and restart conky to see the results. You can customize the setup by editing conkyrc, it's quite intuitive. If you have done any HTML+CSS coding before, you'll be right at home with the conky syntax.

http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html Lists available conky variables and http://conky.sourceforge.net/config_settings.html lists the config settings. You can also try the man pages for reference.

I am posting my conkyrc below for backup purposes.


# Conky sample configuration
#
# the list of variables has been removed from this file in favour
# of keeping the documentation more maintainable.
# Check http://conky.sf.net for an up-to-date-list.
# set to yes if you want Conky to be forked in the background
background no
# X font when Xft is disabled, you can pick one with program xfontsel
#font 5x7
#font 6x10
#font 7x13
#font 8x13
#font 9x15
#font *mintsmild.se*
#font -*-*-*-*-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
font 9x15
# Use Xft?
use_xft yes
# Xft font when Xft is enabled
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=8
# Text alpha when using Xft
xftalpha 0.8
# Print everything to stdout?
# out_to_console no
# MPD host/port
# mpd_host localhost
# mpd_port 6600
# mpd_password tinker_bell
# Print everything to console?
# out_to_console no
# mail spool
mail_spool $MAIL
# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 5.0
# This is the number of times Conky will update before quitting.
# Set to zero to run forever.
total_run_times 0
# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window yes
# If own_window is yes, you may use type normal, desktop or override
own_window_type override
# Use pseudo transparency with own_window?
own_window_transparent yes
# If own_window_transparent is set to no, you can set the background colour here
own_window_colour white
# If own_window is yes, these window manager hints may be used
#own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky
# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer yes
# Minimum size of text area
minimum_size 280 5
# Draw shades?
draw_shades no
# Draw outlines?
draw_outline no
# Draw borders around text
draw_borders no
# Draw borders around graphs
draw_graph_borders yes
# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 8
# border margins
border_margin 4
# border width
border_width 1
# Default colors and also border colors
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color green
# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
#alignment top_left
alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right
#alignment none
# Gap between borders of screen and text
# same thing as passing -x at command line
gap_x 12
gap_y 35
# Subtract file system buffers from used memory?
no_buffers yes
# set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase
uppercase no
# number of cpu samples to average
# set to 1 to disable averaging
cpu_avg_samples 2
# number of net samples to average
# set to 1 to disable averaging
net_avg_samples 2
# Force UTF8? note that UTF8 support required XFT
override_utf8_locale no
# Add spaces to keep things from moving about? This only affects certain objects.
use_spacer left
# Allow each port monitor to track at most this many connections (if 0 or not set, default is 256)
#max_port_monitor_connections 256
# Maximum number of special things, e.g. fonts, offsets, aligns, etc.
#max_specials 512
# Maximum size of buffer for user text, i.e. below TEXT line.
#max_user_text 16384
# variable is given either in format $variable or in ${variable}. Latter
# allows characters right after the variable and must be used in network
# stuff because of an argument
# stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen
TEXT
$color $nodename - $sysname $kernel on $machine
$hr

Uptime:${color #606060} $uptime $color - Load:${color #606060} $loadavg
$color CPU Usage:${color #606060} $cpu% ${cpubar}
${color #606060} ${cpugraph 0000ff 00ec00}
$color RAM Usage:${color #606060} $mem/$memmax - $memperc% ${membar}
$color Swap Usage:${color #606060} $swap/$swapmax - $swapperc% ${swapbar}
$color Processes:${color #606060} $processes $color Running:${color #606060} $running_processes

$color$hr

Networking:
Down:${color #606060} ${downspeed wlan0} k/s$color ${offset 80}Up:${color #606060} ${upspeed wlan0} k/s
${color #606060}${downspeedgraph wlan0 32,150 ff0000 0000ec} ${upspeedgraph wlan0 32,150 0000ff ec0000}
$color File systems: / ${color #606060}${fs_used /}/${fs_size /} ${fs_bar /}

$color Name PID CPU% MEM%
${color #ec0000} ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color #606060} ${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${top name 4} ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top mem 4}

$color Mem usage
${color #ec0000} ${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${color #606060} ${top_mem name 2} ${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem cpu 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${top_mem name 3} ${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem cpu 3} ${top_mem mem 3}

$color$hr

Connections in:${color #606060} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count}$color Connections out:${color #606060} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 count}$color Total:${color #606060} ${tcp_portmon 1 65535 count}

$color Inbound Connection ${alignr} Local Service/Port
${color #606060} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 2}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 3}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 4}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 5} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 5}

$color Outbound Connection ${alignr} Remote Service/Port$color
${color #606060} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 2}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 3}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 4}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 5} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 5}

$color$hr


1 comment:

Dasun said...

I was Looking for a this kind of a tool from long time , that don't use a Widget engine. Thnx bro . keep up the good work