# Useful eyecandy - gkrellmd

## aLEczapKA

I have a desktop machine (eternium) where I do some desktop stuff and a server (genesis) where I do my usual server stuff...

The server has 2x350Mhz processors and this is kinda slow.. most of the time I wait for compilcated, huge, bloated mysql queries to finish...

To solve it I have to come out with some faster/better alternatives of the queries/php code, so I need to know what is the resources usage on my server.

I used to ran top (to check the processor/system usage) in some terminal window connected to the server but this wouldn't be so cool like having such informations on fluxbox slit, right?   :Wink: 

For this use gkrellm. gkrellmd is included with gkrell and it is a gnu krell monitor server.

As you might predict you run gkrellmd on the serve and gkrellm on the client machine like that:

Your server

```

gkrellmd

```

Your local machine

```

gkrellm2 -s your_server_here -p your_port_here

```

(You could add -w option to gkrellm2 to have it docked onto Fluxbox slit)

[img:988a4804d1]http://fluxbox.org/gf/gkrellmd-.jpg[/img:988a4804d1]

It looks nice and provides useful info.

Have phun!

UPDATE

Here is HOWTO on securely monitoring a server using gkrellmd over SSH

```
# Sample config file for the GKrellM server gkrellmd

# The server update frequency is independent of and should be less than

# the client update frequency.  Values may be from 1 to 10 and should be

# smaller values to reduce network traffic.

#

update-hz 3

# Limit number of simultaneous clients allowed to connect.

#

max-clients 2

# Specify the port to listen on for connections.

#

port 19150

# List of hosts allowed to connect.  If no hosts are specified, all hosts

# will be allowed.

#

allow-host  localhost

allow-host  127.0.0.1

allow-host  ::1

# Run in background and detach from the controlling terminal

detach

# Time interval between checks for various monitors.

#

#fs-interval 2

#nfs-interval 16

```

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## La`res

I have been wondering how to do this for a while.

Thanxz

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## searcher

Hmm do i need a seperate instance of gkrellm for every pc i want shown in the slit? Or can i put different systems such as a server and a workstation in one instance? Maybe you could include this in the howto, which is excellent by the way. 

~searcher

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## aLEczapKA

 *searcher wrote:*   

> Hmm do i need a seperate instance of gkrellm for every pc i want shown in the slit? Or can i put different systems such as a server and a workstation in one instance? Maybe you could include this in the howto, which is excellent by the way. 
> 
> ~searcher

 

I think you need one instance per machine. I didn't find anything on how to solve this.

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## viperlin

hey i've been wanting this on my  home made router (running IPCop Linux) is there any way to get a tarball of gkrellmd that contains all libraries that gkrellmd needs because when i copied the binary over it complained about libraries and there is no easy way to install them.

so i was thinking there may be a tarball that extacts to one directory and runs from there. that way i can monitor my router better.

just hoping  :Smile: 

i am just about to try the gkrellm-server rpm (converted to tarball with rpm2tgz) hopefully it works

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## viperlin

ok the gkrellm-server rpm worked  :Very Happy:  now i'll find out exactly how much traffic my LAN uses a month (if it reaches 30-31GB per month then we get billed extra, (they average it out at the end of the month, if it is 1GB per day average we get billed more for extensive use of the network.))

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## agmoe

Nice, but another thing I am curious about is what kind of terminals you have got on your desktop, and how you made the "edges" disappear. I think it looked really nice.

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## viperlin

oh you mean like mine and the screenshot above?

the latest screenshot on my website(the last one with the gnu wei wei wallpaper) uses these

the top is a syslog output (fancy Eterm command that runs "tail -f /var/log/syslog" through grc)

the command needs co-ordinates changed to move it around the desktop, just fidle about with them and u'll get it.

top command i use is:

 *Quote:*   

> Eterm -Ox --shade 0 -g=235x15+240+40 --no-cursor -n syslog -T syslog --scrollbar off -f yellow --buttonbar 0 -e grc tail -f /var/log/syslog 

 

(i put the co-ordinates in bold so you can tell where they are a bit easyer.)

and the bottom one is the putput os the apache access_log file so i can see when people go on my site and it's easy to notice attempted IIS exploits (in which i block the originating IP through IPtables) 

here's the command:

 *Quote:*   

> Eterm -Ox --shade 0 -g=230x15+0+800 --no-cursor -n access_log -T access_log --scrollbar off -f yellow --buttonbar 0 -e grc tail -f /var/log/apache/access_log 

 [/url]

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## rojaro

if you just want the syslog (or more logfiles) on your desktop background try root-tail instead. uses less resources, supports all kind of fonts + shadows ... using eterm for this is shooting fleas with cannons

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## viperlin

ooh thanks, didn't know that   :Rolling Eyes:   looking at it now, thanks/

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## agmoe

Thanks, but for some reason the transparency doesnt work. It works in aterm and xchat though. I'll have a alook at it now. Thanks

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## viperlin

erm, root-tail does not work in gnome due to the nautilus desktop, so i'll keep Eterm until i end up using fluxbox again (i like Gnome too much)  :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Vergo

 *viperlin wrote:*   

> now i'll find out exactly how much traffic my LAN uses a month (if it reaches 30-31GB per month then we get billed extra, (they average it out at the end of the month, if it is 1GB per day average we get billed more for extensive use of the network.))

 

You could also try vnStat for that traffic logging/monitoring. Not really an eyecandy since it's console based but works well for that kind of simple task.

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## timfreeman

script to serve the daemon over ssh automatically.. check it:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=100709

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## bravo911

 *viperlin wrote:*   

> ok the gkrellm-server rpm worked  now i'll find out exactly how much traffic my LAN uses a month (if it reaches 30-31GB per month then we get billed extra, (they average it out at the end of the month, if it is 1GB per day average we get billed more for extensive use of the network.))

 

I'm interested in getting the gkrellmd running on my IPcop 1.3.0 (Fixes 1-9) box. Care to give me any ideas as to how you pulled this one off? dont make me grovel!

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## viperlin

really, i used a gkrellmd 2.1.14 server only rpm, then used rpm2tgz to make the tar.gz and extracted at / (placng the files in /usr/bin and stuff), than it, it worked.

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## bravo911

I was using the latest version and it seems to require a newer version of the glib libraries, thus would not work! That version works perfectly with IPCop 1.3.0 

Thanks again!

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## Insanity5902

If you are unlukcy like me, and you have to administor windows server.  I worked on running the gkrellm server on windows and connect to it via linux

Upon completion I wrote this.

Works great, if the server is running Windows 2003 The System name dispaly causes gkrellm to crash, other then that it works great.  I can monitor uptim, disk usage, net usage, ram cpu everything that I need to.

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## mattmm

When I run:

```

gkrellm2 -s [server address] -p 19510

```

I get:

```

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server

Xlib: No protocol specified

(gkrellm2:31343): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:  

```

Is that trying to open up an X window on the server? The server is FC2 btw. I set it to allow all hosts just to test if it were a host problem, and still received the same error.

----------

