Glances a new system-monitor tool for your GNU/Linux

onebuck · 02-05-2013, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Most of this post is based on the information found in the blog of Nicolargo, the author of this tool.
Glances is a free software (licensed under LGPL) to monitor your GNU/Linux or BSD operating system from a text interface. Glances uses the library libstatgrab to retrieve information from your system and it is developed in Python.
So another top/htop clone ?
Yes and no, an unique thing about glances that I’ve immediately seen is that you can configure thresholds in its configuration file and see the status of your system resources with colors that indicates if everything is fine or not, at a glance

TB0ne · 02-07-2013, 09:27 AM

Nice find! Thanks

onebuck · 02-07-2013, 09:38 AM

Hi,

Your Welcome!
Please share which Gnu/Linux you choose to install too and any problems that may occur. Hopefully that information may help other users.

brianL · 02-07-2013, 01:59 PM

Working OK on Slackware64 14.0. Easily installed (an alternative, maybe better way, would be to create a Slackware package):

Code:

# sbopkg -i pip.sqf -k

then:

Code:

# pip install Glances

suicidaleggroll · 02-07-2013, 03:10 PM

I'm afraid on OpenSUSE it has some issues. Installation went easy enough, but the program itself reports incorrect data and crashes every few minutes.

Its reported memory usage is completely different than that of free, and a couple of minutes ago it reported that one of my processes was using 12000% CPU. I like the layout and the idea, and I could get past the incorrect reporting when it comes to memory, but the constant crashing makes it useless to me.

It looks like from the crash report that it's trying to look up the username for a UID that does not exist on the system, which causes a cascade of failures in the program.

If it helps, here's the actual output:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/glances", line 9, in <module> load_entry_point('Glances==1.6', 'console_scripts', 'glances')()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/glances/glances.py", line 3679, in main stats.update()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/glances/glances.py", line 1067, in update self.__update__(input_stats)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/glances/glances.py", line 1049, in __update__self.glancesgrabprocesses.update()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/glances/glances.py", line 723, in update procstat = self.__get_process_stats__(proc)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/glances/glances.py", line 670, in __get_process_stats__procstat['username'] = proc.username
File "/usr/local/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/psutil/__init__.py", line 306, in username return pwd.getpwuid(self.uids.real).pw_name
KeyError: 'getpwuid(): uid not found: 1002'

The line terminators were all broken in the output, so I tried to put them back in where necessary.

It appears to be mostly working on Fedora though, other than the unrealistic network speeds it keeps reporting.

Philip Lacroix · 02-07-2013, 05:44 PM

Thanks for sharing! A really nice tool, I installed it on Debian wheezy (from sid) and it is running smoothly :-)

glances_wheezy.png

[Edit] Regarding the network monitor's output, I compared it with gnome-system-monitor during a download and in my case the values are not identical, but very close.

brianL · 02-07-2013, 07:08 PM

Seems to work OK on SlackwareARM (same installation method, of course). This is on my Raspberry Pi.

rng · 02-08-2013, 07:42 AM

It is not in Debian-Testing (Wheezy) repository because of the freeze but I installed it from sid with help from the forum:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ng-4175447932/

Can I set it up to start automatically in a terminal at startup? I am using lxde with lightdm.

Philip Lacroix · 02-08-2013, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rng

Can I set it up to start automatically in a terminal at startup? I am using lxde with lightdm.

Yes, for example you can add a line like this at the end of /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart:

Code:

/usr/bin/xterm -maximized glances

Kind regards,
Philip

Philip Lacroix · 02-08-2013, 04:09 PM

The previous will work for every user starting Lxde. If you want to have glances (or other applications) to be automatically started for a particular user, I'm not sure which is the best solution, but this one will work. Create a new file in your home directory, calling it for example .lxde-autostart, then edit it as a simple shell script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
#
# ~/.lxde-autostart

/usr/bin/xterm -maximized glances &

Save it, then make it executable:

Code:

chmod 755 .lxde-autostart

Add the following line at the end of /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart:

Code:

~/.lxde-autostart

This way, different users can have different applications to be listed in their own .lxde-autostart file.
Maybe we've gone slightly off-topic...

Kind regards,
Philip

rng · 02-08-2013, 06:50 PM

Thanks. From another source I found that I can start it from ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart file also.

Philip Lacroix · 02-08-2013, 07:26 PM

You're welcome. This is a better solution (*the* solution!) but for some reason I don't have that .config/lxsession/ path in my home directory.

Best regards,
Philip

Philip Lacroix · 02-09-2013, 02:11 PM

Glances is working fine on Slackware 13.37 too. I'll post here the steps.

glances_slack_13.37.png

First I downloaded and installed python's setuptools (for python v2.6):

Code:

sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg

The same with psutil:

Code:

tar -xvvzf psutil-0.6.1.tar.gz
cd ~/psutil-0.6.1/
python setup.py install

Finally I installed glances:

Code:

tar -xvvzf nicolargo-glances-v1.6-9-de0e47d.tar.gz
cd ~/nicolargo-glances-de0e47d/
python setup.py install

Downloads:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptoo...-x-linux-other
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/psutil/
http://nicolargo.github.com/glances/

Regards,
Philip