Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Niki Kovacs contact@kikinovak.net wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Don't know about conky, but I think gkrellm can work in a server-client scheme. Maybe that works for you.
One more vote for gkrellm. You can install gkrellm-daemon from the epel repo on the server and then monitor from your workstation.
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Lucian @ lastdot.org lucian@lastdot.orgwrote:
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Niki Kovacs contact@kikinovak.net wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Don't know about conky, but I think gkrellm can work in a server-client scheme. Maybe that works for you. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Niki Kovacs wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
If you use X remotely much, just take the whole desktop with freenx on the server and the NX client that you can download from http://www.nomachine.com.
It is very efficient and lets you disconnect/reconnect with everything still running, even from a different client - or even platform.
== Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
Les Mikesell a écrit :
If you use X remotely much, just take the whole desktop with freenx on the server and the NX client that you can download from http://www.nomachine.com.
It is very efficient and lets you disconnect/reconnect with everything still running, even from a different client - or even platform.
Yeah, I'm a happy user of FreeNX already... although I don't use it for the kind of problem at hand.
I've been working for a small company recently who run Ubuntu 8.10 on a server, and all their desktops are in fact FreeNX clients connected to that one machine, so folks can work even from their homes. Works great.
Niki
Niki Kovacs wrote:
Les Mikesell a écrit :
If you use X remotely much, just take the whole desktop with freenx on the server and the NX client that you can download from http://www.nomachine.com.
It is very efficient and lets you disconnect/reconnect with everything still running, even from a different client - or even platform.
Yeah, I'm a happy user of FreeNX already... although I don't use it for the kind of problem at hand.
I've been working for a small company recently who run Ubuntu 8.10 on a server, and all their desktops are in fact FreeNX clients connected to that one machine, so folks can work even from their homes. Works great.
You can run multiple NX sessions if you want your 'own' desktop plus one for monitoring/managing other systems. However they are likely to pick the same display number and conflict if you are the first connection to each freenx server. You can avoid this problem by changing the DISPLAY_BASE setting in /etc/nxserver/node.conf (after copying from node.conf.sample). It's also much nicer for interacting with VMware guests than the VMware console tool after the network is configured and working.
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 2:59 AM, Niki Kovacs contact@kikinovak.net wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki
You typically do not monitor servers with these kinds of tools. They are made for workstations that have real people sitting at them. What you want for servers is software that saves to a log file, and then you view the log files as you desire. One of the most common tools for this is 'sar', which is part of the systat package. There is an interesting GUI tool for it called kSar that can use the logs from sar and generate graphs.
For "realtime" monitoring, one would typically look at snmp and cacti to generate graphs, send alerts, etc...
On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 08:59 +0200, Niki Kovacs wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki
Hi Niki,
You could try a local script that gets values from a server that you would like to monitor... I might suggest looking into setting up snmpd on the server and using snmp walk to probe specific values (that relate to processes/free memory).
What exactly would you be looking to monitor on the remote server?
Tait
Tait Clarridge a écrit :
You could try a local script that gets values from a server that you would like to monitor... I might suggest looking into setting up snmpd on the server and using snmp walk to probe specific values (that relate to processes/free memory).
Thanks for all the numerous! I'll take a peek at all of them as soon as I have a spare moment and then report back.
Cheers,
Niki
While you take suggestions - look also for collecd. It's very easy to setup, customise and "interogate" graphs.
Cheers, -Amos
On 10/20/09, Niki Kovacs contact@kikinovak.net wrote:
Tait Clarridge a écrit :
You could try a local script that gets values from a server that you would like to monitor... I might suggest looking into setting up snmpd on the server and using snmp walk to probe specific values (that relate to processes/free memory).
Thanks for all the numerous! I'll take a peek at all of them as soon as I have a spare moment and then report back.
Cheers,
Niki _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Niki Kovacs wrote:
Hi,
I've been using Conky for some time, a nifty utility to monitor just about anything on the PC. Vital things like CPU, RAM, swap, disks, current song playing in MPD :o)
Here's what it looks like :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/bureau_conky.png
And with more detail :
http://www.microlinux.fr/images/conky_zoom.png
Now I wonder... I'd really like to use that to monitor my remote server. I know this feature isn't officially supported by Conky, but I'm right now thinking about a workaround. Something like: OK, my server is 'headless' (e. g.: no graphical server, nothing), but why not install just xorg-x11-server-Xorg, then use Conky and forward it to my local display with SSH -X ? I'm pondering this question, thinking about the possible issues...
... so maybe one of you guys here has come up with some solution ?
Cheers,
Niki _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi, The suggestions offered by other posters to install/use a monitoring/polling/graphing system is a fine idea. Using something like Cacti is great for collecting and viewing historical data.
However for looking at what a server is doing _right now_, that kind of system falls short. I think your original idea is spot on!
I do exactly what you suggest. I keep a minimal X install on most of my headless machines -- I still boot run level 3. This lets me "ssh -X" to a machine and execute graphical commands, and up the come on my local Linux workstation.
Occasionally, this is very useful for me. For instance: I have some of these headless boxen scattered throughout the network. With this, I can launch firefox on a remote machine. This lets me test viewing resources from various points of the network; great for security policy testing.
What you're talking about works great too. I have gkrellm installed on these machines too, as well as the servers. Cacti is great for looking at trending or historical data. But to see what a server is up to _right now_ I fire up gkrellm this way (along with things like "tail 'cat /var/log/_something_'" and htop) to see what the machine is up to right then and there.
gkrellm is available from the wonderful rpmforge repo, but I'm sure Conky would work too.
Andy Hull
Andrew Hull wrote:
I do exactly what you suggest. I keep a minimal X install on most of my headless machines -- I still boot run level 3. This lets me "ssh -X" to a machine and execute graphical commands, and up the come on my local Linux workstation.
Occasionally, this is very useful for me. For instance: I have some of these headless boxen scattered throughout the network. With this, I can launch firefox on a remote machine. This lets me test viewing resources from various points of the network; great for security policy testing.
What you're talking about works great too. I have gkrellm installed on these machines too, as well as the servers. Cacti is great for looking at trending or historical data. But to see what a server is up to _right now_ I fire up gkrellm this way (along with things like "tail 'cat /var/log/_something_'" and htop) to see what the machine is up to right then and there.
gkrellm is available from the wonderful rpmforge repo, but I'm sure Conky would work too.
You can take this one step further by picking an always-on host where you run freenx. Then connect with the NX client from www.nomachine.com and start a desktop where you can park long running jobs like monitoring tools (including remote X connections or a bunch of xterms with ssh connections elsewhere). Then you can disconnect the NX client and reconnect later with everything still running. The connection can be from any linux/windows/mac NX client and you get very good remote performance even over low bandwidth connections - and unlike normal X connections, losing the connection doesn't kill the processes.
-
Amos Shapira -
Andrew Hull -
Brian Mathis -
Janez Kosmrlj -
Les Mikesell -
Lucian ＠ lastdot.org -
Niki Kovacs -
Tait Clarridge