Glances -- Eye on your system

Description

Glances is a CLI curses based monitoring tool for both GNU/Linux and BSD.

Glances uses the libstatgrab library to get information from your system. Glances is developed in Python and uses the python-statgrab lib.

Installation

Get the latest version:

$ wget https://github.com/downloads/nicolargo/glances/glances-1.3.tar.gz

Glances use a standard GNU style installer:

$ tar zxvf glances-1.3.tar.gz
$ cd glances-1.3
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Pre-requisites:

• Python 2.6+ (not tested with Python 3+)
• python-statgrab 0.5+ (did not work with python-statgrab 0.4)

Notes: The Debian Squeeze repos only include the python-statgrab 0.4. You had to install the version 0.5 using the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install libstatgrab-dev pkg-config python-dev make
$ wget http://ftp.uk.i-scream.org/sites/ftp.i-scream.org/pub/i-scream/pystatgrab/pystatgrab-0.5.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf pystatgrab-0.5.tar.gz
$ cd pystatgrab-0.5/
$ ./setup.py build
$ sudo ./setup.py install

Notes: Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10. The instruction to install the version 0.5 are here: https://github.com/nicolargo/glances/issues/5#issuecomment-3033194

Running

Easy:

$ glances.py

User guide

By default, stats are refrsh every second, to change this setting, you can use the -t option. For exemple to set the refrech rate to 5 seconds:

$ glances.py -t 5

Importants stats are colored:

• GREEN: stat counter is < 50%
• BLUE: stat counter is > 50% and < 70%
• MAGENTA: stat counter is > 70% and < 90%
• RED: stat counter is > 90%

When Glances is running, you can press:

• 'a' to set the automatic mode. The process list is sorted automatically

  If CPU > 70%, sort by process CPU consomption

  If MEM > 70%, sort by process size

• 'c' the processes list is sorted by CPU consomption

• 'm' the processes list is sorted by process size

• 'q' Exit

Limitation

The current version of the python-statgrab API can not retrieve the file system statistics. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libstatgrab/+bug/886783

Todo

You are welcome to contribute to this software.

• Packaging for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat, BSD...
• Check the needed Python library in the configure.ac
• Add file system stats when the python-statgrab is corrected
• Add a user guide window