[CentOS] Monitoring a remote server with Conky ?

Mon Oct 19 13:24:42 UTC 2009
Brian Mathis <brian.mathis at gmail.com>

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 2:59 AM, Niki Kovacs <contact at 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...