pyosdmon

Introduction

Pyosdmon is a set of Python plugins that monitor system resources. Examples of monitors are:

• CPU, memory and network usage monitors
• Messaging systems notifiers
• Any other resource that can be monitored

Pyosdmon implements a simple invisible panel which holds the plugin's output. Each plugin is placed in a panel window. Plugins' output is a text that is written to the screen through the xosd interface.

For example, possible panel configurations are showed as follows:

+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| plugin1 | plugin2 | plugin3 | plugin4 |
+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| plugin5 | plugin6 | plugin7 | plugin8 |
+---------+---------+---------+---------+


+---------+
| plugin1 |
+---------+
| plugin2 |
+---------+
| plugin3 |
+---------+
| plugin4 |
+---------+
| plugin5 |
+---------+

The number of rows and columns and the position of the panel in the screen are configurable, as well as font size, style, and color.

Each window of the panel, where plugins sit, has the following format:

<caption> <value> <unit> <bar_char>

• <caption> is the plugin identifier (e.g., cpu)
• <value> is the text returned by the plugin.
• <unit> is the unit to be used for the plugins' value (e.g., kB/s)
• <bar_char> is the character used to assembly the plugin's bar. It's only used if the bar plugin's attribute is set to True

Except for <value>, all other components are configurable through plugins' configuration file (individually for each plugin).

	screenshot1 (bigger)
	screenshot2 (bigger)
	screenshot3 (bigger)

Requirements

Pyosdmon requires the latest version of pyosd and all its dependencies to run.

Plugins

Currently the following plugins are implemented:

• User CPU usage
• System CPU usage
• Composite CPU usage (system + user)
• Available memory (RAM)
• Used memory (RAM)
• Used swap
• PPP interface
• Ethernet interface
• Clock
• Fortune
• Uname
• Uptime

Using

Change to pyosdmon's directory and execute it:

$ ./pyosdmon

Since the default is showing no plugin, you'll have to use a configuration file. You can take one from the sample directory or you can build your own.

Configuration

Global attributes of the panel are configured in the file ~/.pyosdmon/global.conf and per-plugin configuration are set in ~/.pyosdmon/plugins/<plugin-name>.conf.

Configuration files are simple Python files (see examples in the samples directory in the distribution).

The global configuration file ~/.pyosdmon/global.conf must have the following line before all the attributes configuration:

from plugins.plugins import *

Global configuration

• font: font to be used in the monitors (default = -*-fixed-*-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*). You can use xfontsel -print to select the font
• refresh: time between two consecutive monitor's values reading (default = 1). If you are using a slow machine, you'd better increase this value
• position: the position of the panel. Possible values are 'top' and 'bottom' (default = bottom)
• align: alignment of the panel. Possible values are 'right', 'left' and 'center' (default = left)
• color: color to be used (default = 'yellow')
• caption_size: number of characters reserved for the monitor's caption (default = 7)
• max_rows: maximum number of rows the panel uses (default = 6)
• max_cols: maximum number of columns the panel uses (default = 3)
• bar_scale: value used to scale the plugins' bar. The greater this number, the smaller the bar (default = 4)
• hide: specifies if the panel should be hidden or not (default = False). If set to True, the panel will remain hidden until some plugin's threshold value is reached. Only plugins listed on the popup_on variable make the panel unhide
• popup_on: list of plugin names that can make the panel unhide (default = [])
• window_width: width (in characters) of each panel window (default = 40)
• window_height: height (in lines) of each panel window (default = 1)
• plugins: list of plugins to be used (default = [])

Per-plugin configuration

• pos: position of the plugin in the panel (x, y)
• bar: if the plugin has a bar
• caption: plugin's caption
• bar_char: character used in plugin's bar (if bar = True)
• unit: unit of plugin's monitored values
• threshold: threshold value. Monitored values bigger than threshold make monitors popup (if they were hidden)

Besides these attributes, plugins can have particular ones. Check the variable defaults in plugins' code to find out what the attributes are.

Runtime control

Pyosdmon can have some configurations changed during runtime. You can control it by inserting commands into the ~/.pyosdmon/control file. Control commands are the same as used in the global configuration file. Additionally, there are some more:

• stop = True: stops pyosdmon
• reconfig = True: forces the global and per-plugin configuration files to be reread.

Examples:

$ echo 'stop = True' > ~/pyosdmon/control

$ echo 'reconfigure = True' > ~/pyosdmon/control

Writing plugins

TO DO

Tips

If you don't want windows to be over the monitors (e.g., when you maximize them), you can use a window without windowmanager decorations as pyosdmon background. For example, you can use a xterm with a geometry similar to the pyosdmon panel's.

Bugs

Probably a lot.

To do

• More plugins
• Testing
• Configuration interface
• Handle static plugins (e.g., uname)
• Handle plugins that should be always unhidden (e.g., clock)

Known issues

• It can be quite intrusive in slow machines
• Since several plugins use information from Linux /proc, pyosdmon is quite dependent on this operating system, unless plugins are written for other platforms.

Licence

Pyosdmon is GPL.

Download

You can download pyosdmon from http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~mario/download/pyosdmon/pyosdmon-0.2.tar.bz2

Author

Mario Domenech Goulart -- moc.liamg@traluog.oiram