GKrellM

= Introduction = GKrellM is a powerful graphical system monitor. It integrates in a compact view a lot of customizable informations, like sensors, CPU/memory load, filesystems usage, network traffic and so on. Every feature comes with customizable alarms and with the opportunity to run some personal script (send a mail, stop a process, power off, etc) when critical situations occur. A lot of official and unofficial plugins are available, for special tasks and fun. Many plugins are in the portage tree and many more are listed on the developer site.

Very powerful, GKrellM comes with a daemon that can be ran on a remote machine (i.e. a server deep in a cellar or far in the world) to monitor it from your wide-screen box.

If you want to try another program similar to GKrellM you can read Conky. Many users love Conky, because the textual configuration; but Conky cannot monitor remote (and therefore multiple) machines.

= Installation = GKrellM comes with some interesting USE flags. is required if you are installing GKrellM in your monitoring box; it is not necessary if you are installing GKrellM in your monitored machine. is very useful as graphical interface and alarm manager for hardware sensors.
 * enables the graphical interface (based on GTK, works perfectly on KDE);
 * enables monitoring of hdd temperature (it will install app-admin/hddtemp);
 * adds linux lm_sensors (hardware sensors) support (it will install );
 * adds Native Language Support (using gettext - GNU locale utilities);
 * adds support for Secure Socket Layer connections;
 * adds support for (TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 support).

Execute in your flavour:

and

= Configuration = If you emerged GKrellm with the USE flag, you have to follow the Lm sensors guide before, to activate and tune up your motherboard sensors. Similarly, if you emerged with the USE flag, you should read the hddtemp guide before.

There are many configuration options available via graphical interface, so they're very easy to find and understand. Hopefully, you don't need any special explanation. Be sure to note the detailed filesystem tool, that can be a graphical replacement of the df command and a notification system.

Every monitor comes with a warning level and an alarm level. The built-in warning and alarm task is a weak animation, but you can run (and repeat) a command to take an action against the problem.

= Remote monitoring = If you want to monitor a remote machine from a local machine, you have to configure/run the gkrellmd daemon on the remote machine. The configuration is quite easy and the default values will work. If you are in an untrusted network, limiting the allowed client is a good idea.

Once done, start the daemon:

If you want the daemon starts automatically when the machine starts:

To monitor the remote system, just call the GKrellM program with the -s option from your local box:

= See also = The developer page

Browse some screenshots at muhri site Screenshot about he graphical power of GKrellM at Linuxcs.org

Check the Conky alternative at Conky