GKrellM Monitors Is A Highly Customisable System Monitor

I've used Gkrellm for ages on my Linux boxes, maybe since the late 90's, but can't stand the Windows port. For Windows I use Sysmeter, even though it is extremely outdated.

Ah, finally something that can be a graphical Rainmeter. Gona try it out hopefully today

Now if only the people who made conky could port it to windows.

I primarily use linux, but get stuck with windows for work. I've tried rainmeter and use samurize, but for sheer simplicity, I prefer the conky config text files.

I found GKrellM a bit clunky when it came to the eyecandy, maybe this can be modified, but it can certainly give you all of the information you would want.

@drkgeek: You should send all corrections to the author of the article itself rather than posting it in the comments, as they don't check the comments as much as their e-mail.

Typo about 2 lines from the bottom. "your your"

drkgeek

In Vista and Windows 7, the Resource Monitor is the best monitoring tool I have seen. The Windows 7 resource monitor is better than of Vista. If I see network activity or disk activity or high CPU utilization and cannot figure which process is responsible, the resource monitor tells me right away. My take is that with resource monitor, there is no need for any third party utilities. There is nothing more that they can reveal.

arungupta

perhaps an alternative reality??

August 19 - 1998 Russian financial crisis: Russia defaults on the state short-term bonds, and devalues the ruble. The ruble loses 70% of its value against U.S. dollar in the next 6 months. Several of the largest Russians banks collapse, and millions of people lose their savings.

Does anybody know if this program can monitor remote systems like Samurize can?

Did I wake up in 1998?

@TekWarren:

hehe.. i know so off topic i had to pull in a 1998 world event. :P

i still prefer the non gui look of rainmeter :)

This is "ok" in OS X, if you want something that looks very similar to this, but without the plugin framework, check out [www.gauchosoft.com]

It works very well, and is customizable. (I have it currently set to a white frame and letters, shades of gray for the graphs, and transparent for a background)

I love GKrellm for what it does, and what it can do, but on OS X, X Resource Graph is much more "Mac-like".

operator207

This thing's older than dirt. I used to use it back in the day, but Conky is MUCH better looking.

TaitJebbie

@TekWarren:

This may be helpfull: [pdb.finkproject.org]

TekWarren

@seamonkey420: WTF??

On topic...I thought this would be cool to run on my Dell Mini Hackintosh but there is little info other than:

"a version may be compiled using code contributed by Ben Hines"

With his name being a link to an email address.

TekWarren

I love gkrellm and have used it for years. The default theme though is ugly as sin. 99% of the user contributed themes are equally ugly and many have such low contrast on the graphs that you can't even read them clearly. Just about the only one I can stand is the "prime23" theme. (unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to link directly to a theme. You have to go to the skins site: http://www.muhri.net/gkrellm/ and search for 'prime23'). I really wish they'd pick a better default theme as the ugliness I feel probably turns a lot of people off to a great app before they give it a chance.

SarasvatiDana?

Does anyone know if this (or something else) can tell you what thread or app is behind the disk access? Sometimes I can tell I have a lot of hard disk activity but I don't know exactly what is causing it. Is there something in this situation that you can use to figure out what is causing the continuous hard disk activity?

IraKhayos

@arungupta: Process explorer is better

orlo

@seamonkey420: I figured it was a "420" thing....

I have such low expectations of anyone who fixates on that number

How the hell do you say "GKrellm"?????

To DesignHobo: I always pronounce it "Gee-krellm" [shrugs]

I like gkrellm because I can park it in the upper-right corner of my monitor and resize all my windows to leave that little narrow strip viewable. Conky always requires forces me to close/minimize/move open windows to see it?

wilberfan

@FAQ)

@BlueMask (a have it a little wider than in the screenshot).

Here's a link to Prime23.

@IraKhayos: There may be a plugin that does it, but by default you just get the current disk activity. I don't know of a good way on Linux to track down a process by disk usage other than looking at the currently running programs and guessing.

@UnderLoK: Agreed. I've used Gkrellm on Linux since the late 90s but the Windows port isn't as good. On Windows I use SysTrayMeter and Sysinternals' Process Explorer for more detailed information.

I use this for controlling my dell fans in Linux. Similar to i8kfangui for windows. I think it's ugly as hell, and gets hidden as soon as it starts up unless i need it to change my fan speed. I've stripped all the extra crap from it, and it just shows my fans. I have no idea when anyone would want to use this for anything but that. Oh and it's old as hell.

RaleighTethys

@Gepeto: I'm with you man.

I've come to feel very disconnected from my computer if I don't have gkrellm running to tell me what's going on with the CPU, disk, or net meters. It's pretty much the one thing that helped me get away from my dependence on WindowMaker's dockapps.

The one thing I find missing is an iotop display, which shows what processes are thrashing the hard disk. But it does have a similar display for the top processes hogging the CPU.

Rowin Andruscavage

@yachius: Yep, you can run gkrellmd on the machine you want to monitor, and then connect to it using the gkrellm client with an option to provide the IP address. This only provides immediate status, though, not much in the way of logging. You might be happier with something like munin or even nagios (both have relatively steep learning/setup curves, though).

Rowin Andruscavage

SiMeter....old but its the perfect size, edit a few XMLs to create your own custom colors, Windows only, but by far the best

TamaraSmolinski