gkrellm(1)

NAME
gkrellm - The GNU Krell Monitors

SYNOPSIS
gkrellm [ --help ] [ -t | --theme dir ] [ -g | --geometry +x+y ] [ -wm ] [ -w | --withdrawn ] [ -c | --config suffix ] [ -nc ] [ -f | --force-host-config ] [ -demo ] [ -p | --plugin plugin.so ]

DESCRIPTION

With a single process, gkrellm manages multiple stacked monitors and supports applying themes to match the monitors appearance to your window manager, Gtk, or any other theme.

  FEATURES

•   SMP CPU, Disk, Proc, and active net interface monitors with LEDs.

•   Internet monitor that displays current and charts historical port hits.

•   Memory and swap space usage meters and a system uptime monitor.

•   File system meters show capacity/free space and can mount/umount.

•   A mbox/maildir/MH/POP3/IMAP mail monitor which can launch a mail reader or remote mail fetch program.

•   Clock/calendar and hostname display.

•   APM laptop battery monitor.

•   CPU/motherboard temperature/fan/voltage displays if lm_sensors modules installed.

•   Multiple monitors managed by a single process to reduce system load.

•   A timer button that can execute PPP or ISDN logon/logoff scripts.

•   Charts are autoscaling with configurable grid line resolution, or

•   can be set to a fixed scale mode.

•   Separate colors for "in" and "out" data. The in color is used for CPU user time, disk read, forks, and net receive data. The out color is used for CPU sys time, disk write, load, and net transmit data.

•   Commands can be configured to run when monitor labels are clicked.

•   gkrellm is plugin capable so special interest monitors can be created.

•   Many themes are available.

  USER INTERFACE

• Top frame

    Btn 1
        Press and drag to move gkrellm window

    Btn 3
        Popup menu for user config window

• Side frames

    Btn 2
        Slide gkrellm window shut (Btn1 if -m2 option)

    Btn 3
        Popup menu for user config window

• All charts

    Btn 1
        Toggle draw of extra info on the chart.

    Btn 3
        Brings up a chart configuration window.

• Inet charts

    Btn 2
        Toggle between port hits per minute and hour.

• Most panels

    Btn 3
        Opens the configuration window directly to a monitor's configuration page.

• File System meter panels

    Btn 1
        On the label, Toggle visibility of secondary fs monitors. On the mount button, run the mount/umount commands.

    Btn 2
        Toggle display of label and fs capacity scrolling display.

• Mem and Swap meter panels

    Btn 2
        Toggle display of label and memory or swap capacity scrolling display.

• Mailbox monitor message count button

    Btn 1
        Launch a mail reader program. If options permit, also stop animations and reset remote message counts.

    Btn 2
        Toggle mail check mute mode which inhibits the sound notify program, and optionally inhibits all mail checking.

• Mailbox monitor envelope decal

    Btn 1
        Force a mail check regardless of mute or timeout state.

• APM monitor panel

    Btn 1
        On the charging state decal toggles battery minutes left, percent level, and charge rate display.

    Btn 2
        Anywhere on the panel also toggles the display.

• Keyboard shortcuts

    F1  popup the user config window.

    Page_Up
        previous theme or theme alternative.

    Page_Down
        next theme or theme alternative.

    <Ctl>Page_Up
        previous theme, skipping any theme alternatives.

    <Ctl>Page_Down
        next theme, skipping any theme alternatives.

If a command has been configured to be launched for a monitor, then a button will appear when the mouse enters the panel of that monitor. Clicking the button will launch the command.

A right button mouse click on the side or top frames of the gkrellm window will pop up a user configuration window where you can configure all the builtin and plugin monitors. Chart appearance may be configured by right clicking on a chart, and right clicking on many panels will open the configuration window directly to the corresponding monitor's configuration page.

OPTIONS

--help
    Displays this manual page.

-t, --theme dir
    gkrellm will load all theme image files it finds in dir and parse the gkrellmrc file if one exists. This option overrides the loading of the last theme you configured to be loaded in the Themes configuration window. Theme changes are not saved when gkrellm is run with this option.

-g, --geometry +x+y
    Makes gkrellm move to an (x,y) postition on the screen at startup. Standard X window geometry position (not size) formats are parsed, ie +x+y -x+y +x-y -x-y. Except, negative geometry positions are not recognized (ie +-x--y ).

-wm Forces gkrellm to start up with window manager decorations. The default is no decorations because there are themed borders.

-w, --withdrawn
    gkrellm starts up in withdrawn mode so it can go into the Blackbox slit (and maybe WindowMaker dock).

-c, --config suffix
    Use alternate config files generated by appending suffix to config file names. This overrides any previous host config which may have been setup with the below option.

-f, --force-host-config
    If gkrellm is run once with this option and then the configuration or theme is changed, the config files that are written will have a -hostname appended to them. Subsequent runs will detect the user_config-hostname and gkrellm_theme.cfg-hostname files and use them instead of the normal configuration files (unless the --config option is specified). This is a convenience for allowing remote gkrellm independent config files in a shared home directory, and for the hostname to show up in the X title for window management.

-nc No config mode. The config menu is blocked so no config changes can be made. Useful in certain environments, or maybe for running on a xdm(1) login screen or during a screensaver mode?

-demo
    Force enabling of many monitors so themers can see everything. All config saving is inhibited.

-p, --plugin plugin.so
    For plugin development, load the command line specified plugin so you can avoid repeated install steps in the development cycle.

BUILTIN MONITORS

  Charts

The default for most charts is to automatically adjust the number of grid lines drawn and the resolution per grid so drawn data will be nicely visible. You may change this to fixed grids of 1-5 and/or fixed grid resolutions in the chart configuration windows. However, some combination of the auto scaling modes may give best results.

Auto number of grids:
This means to scale the chart to draw as many grids as is necessary to show all the data on the chart without clipping.

Auto grid resolution has two meanings:
1) If using a fixed number of grids, it means to set the resolution per grid to the smallest value in a base to peak range that draws data without clipping. The peak is the maximum data value encountered and the base is 1/5 the peak.

2) If using auto number of grids, it means to set the resolution per grid to a value such that drawing the peak value encountered requires at least 5 grids to be drawn.

  CPU Monitor

Data is plotted as a percentage. In auto number of grids mode, resolution is a fixed 20% per grid. In fixed number of grids mode, grid resolution is 100% divided by the number of grids.

  Proc Monitor

The krell shows process forks with a full scale value of 10 forks. The chart has a resolution of 10 forks/sec per grid in auto number of grids mode and 50 forks/second maximum on the chart in fixed number of grids mode. The process load resolution per grid is best left at 1.0 for auto number of grids, but can be set as high as 5 if you configure the chart to have only 1 or 2 fixed grids.

  Net Monitor

gkrellm is designed to display a chart for net interfaces which are up, which means they are listed in the routing table (however, it is possible in some cases to monitor unrouted interfaces). One net interface may be linked to a timer button which can be used to connect and disconnect from an ISP.

The timer button shows an off, standby, or on state by a distinctive (color or shape) icon.

ppp Standby state is while the modem phone line is locked while ppp is connecting, and the on state is the ppp link connected. The phone line lock is determined by the existence of the modem lock file /var/spool/lock/LCK..modem, which assumes pppd is using /dev/modem. However, if your pppd setup does not use /dev/modem, then you can configure an alternative with:

    ln  -s  /var/spool/lock/LCK..cuaaS   ~/.gkrellm/LCK..modem

    where cuaaS is the tty device your modem does use. The ppp on state is detected by the existence of /var/run/pppX.pid and the time stamp of this file is the base for the on line time.

ippp
    The timer button standby state is not applicable to isdn interfaces that are always routed. The on state is isdn on line while the ippp interface is routed. The on line timer is reset at transitions from isdn hangup state to on line state.

For both ppp and ippp timer button links, the panel area of the interface is always shown and the chart appears when the interface is routed with the phone link connected or on line. The timer button Start Command must run in the background and this is automatically the default for many ppp logon scripts. A couple of exceptions are wvdial and kppp which need to be explicitly backgrounded:

    wvdail &

or

    kppp -c Foo &

and the timer button Stop Command in these cases could be:

    skill -c wvdial

or

    kppp -k

Otherwise do not append the "&" on ppp Start Command entries that background themselves.

If the timer button is not linked to a net interface, then it can be used as a push on / push off timer

Net monitors can have a label so that the interface can be associated with the identity of the other end of the connection. This is useful if you have several net connections or run multiple remote gkrellm programs. It can be easier to keep track of who is connected to who.

  Mem and Swap Monitor

Here you are reading a ratio of total used to total available. The amount of memory used indicated by the memory monitor is actually a calculated "used" memory. If you enter the "free" command, you will see that most of your memory is almost always used because the kernel uses large amounts for buffers and cache. Since the kernel can free a lot of this memory as user process demand for memory goes up, a more realistic reading of memory in use is obtained by subtracting the buffers and cached memory from the kernel reported used. This is shown in the free command output in the "-/+ buffers/cache" line where a calculated used amount has buffers and cached memory subtracted from the kernel reported used memory, and a calculated free amount has the buffers and cached memory added in.

While the memory meter always shows the calculated "used" memory, the raw memory values total, shared, buffered, and cached may be optionally displayed in the memory panel by entering an appropriate format display string in the config.

Units: All memory values have units of binary megabytes (MiB). Memory sizes have historically been reported in these units because memory arrays on silicon have always increased in size by multiples of 2. Add an address line to a memory chip and you double or quadruple (a multiplexed address) the memory size. A binary megabyte is 2^20 or 1048576. Contrast this with units for other stats such as disk capacities or net transfer rates where the proper units are decimal megabytes or kilobytes. Disk drive capacities do not increase by powers of 2 and manufacturers do not use binary units when reporting their sizes. However, some of you may prefer to see a binary disk drive capacity reported, so it is available as an option - but I don't recommended it.

  Internet Monitor

Displays TCP port connections and records historical port hits on a minute or hourly chart. Middle button click on an inet chart to toggle between the minute and hourly displays. There is a strip below the minute or hour charts where marks are drawn for port hits in second intervals. Each inet krell also shows port hits with a full scale range of 5 hits. The left button toggle of extra info displays current port connections.

For each internet monitor you can specify two labeled datasets with one or two ports for each dataset. There are two ports because some internet ports are related and you might want to group them - for example, the standard http port is 80, but there is also a www web caching service on port 8080. So it makes sense to have a http monitor which combines data from both ports. A possible common configuration would be to create one inet monitor that monitors http hits plotted in one color and ftp hits in another. To do this, setup in the Internet configuration tab:

    http  80 8080    ftp  21

Or you could create separate monitors for http and ftp. Other monitors might be smtp on port 25 or nntp on port 119.

If you check the "Port0 - Port1 is a range" button, then all of the ports between the two entries will be monitored. Clicking the small button on the Inet panels will pop up a window listing the currently connected port numbers and the host that is connected to it.

gkrellm samples TCP port activity once per second, so it is possible for port hits lasting less than a second to be missed.

  File System Monitor

File system mount points can be selected to be monitored with a meter that shows the ratio of blocks used to total blocks available. Mounting commands can be enabled for mount points in one of two ways:

If a mount point is in your /etc/fstab and you have mount permission then mount(8) and umount(8) commands can be enabled and executed for that mount point simply by checking the "Enable /etc/fstab mounting" option. Mount table entries in /etc/fstab must have the "user" or "owner" option set to grant this permission unless gkrellm is run as root. For example, if you run gkrellm as a normal user and you want to be able to mount your floppy, your /etc/fstab could have either of:

    /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy  ext2 user,noauto,rw,exec  0  0
    /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy  ext2 user,defaults  0  0

If gkrellm is run as root or if you have sudo(1) permission to run the mount(8) commands, then a custom mount command can be entered into the "mount command" entry box. A umount(8) command must also be entered if you choose this method. Example mount and umount entries using sudo:

    sudo /bin/mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/A
    sudo /bin/umount /mnt/A

Notes: the mount point specified in a custom mount command (/mnt/A in this example) must be the same as entered in the "Mount Point" entry. Also, you should have the NOPASSWD option set in /etc/sudoers for this.

File system monitors can be created as primary (always visible) or secondary which can be hidden and then shown when they are of interest. For example, you might make primary file system monitors for root, home, or user so they will be always visible, but make secondary monitors for less frequently used mount points such as floppy, zip, backup partitions, foreign file system types, etc. Secondary FS monitors can also be configured to always be visible if they are mounted by checking the "Show if mounted" option. Using this feature you can show the secondary group, mount a file system, and have that FS monitor remain visible even when the secondary group is hidden. A standard cdrom mount will show as 100% full but a monitor for it could be created with mounting enabled just to have the mount/umount convenience.

When the "Ejectable" option is selected for a file system, an eject button will appear when the mouse enters the file system panel. If you are not using /etc/fstab mounting, a device file to eject will also need to be entered. Systems may have varying levels of support for this feature ranging from none or basic using an ioctl() to full support using an eject command to eject all its supported devices. Linux and NetBSD use the "eject" command while FreeBSD uses the "cdcontrol" command, so be sure these commands are installed. Most eject commands will also support closing a CDROM tray. If they do, you will be able to access this function by right clicking the eject button.

  Mail Monitor

Checks your mailboxes for unread mail. A mail reading program (MUA) can be executed with a left mouse click on the mail monitor panel button, and a mail notify (play a sound) program can be executed whenever the new mail count increases. The mail panel envelope decal may also be clicked to force an immediate mail check at any time.

gkrellm is capable of checking mail from local mailbox types mbox, MH, and maildir, and from remote mailbox types POP3 and IMAP.

POP3 and IMAP checking can use non-standard port numbers and password authentication protocols APOP (for POP3 only) and CRAM-MD5 may be selected as long as your mail server supports them.

Before internal POP3 and IMAP checking was added, an external mail fetch/check program could be set up to be executed periodically to download or check remote POP3 or IMAP mail. This method is still available and must be used if you want gkrellm to be able to download remote mail to local mailboxes because the builtin checking functions cannot download.

  APM Laptop Battery Monitor

This meter will be available if a battery exists and will show battery percentage life remaining. A decal indicates if AC line is connected or if the battery is in use. If the data is available, time remaining may be displayed as well as the percentage battery level. If the time remaining is not available or is inaccurate, the Estimate Time option may be selected to display a battery time to run or time to charge which is calculated based on the current battery percent level, user supplied typical battery times, and a default linear extrapolation model. For charging, an exponential charge model may be selected.

A battery low level warning and alarm alert may be set. If battery time is not available from the OS and the estimate time mode is not set, the alert units will be battery percent level. Otherwise the alert units will be battery time left in minutes. If OS battery time is not available and the estimate time mode is set when an alert is created, the alert will have units of time left in minutes and the alert will automatically be destroyed if the estimate time option is subsequently turned off.

  CPU/Motherboard Sensors - Temperature, Voltages, and Fan RPM

For Linux, if you have lm_sensor kernel modules installed which reports sensor readings in /proc/sys/dev/sensors as a chip/tempX, chip/inX, or chip/fanX file, then gkrellm can display your CPU and motherboard temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds. FreeBSD and NetBSD provides sensor reporting for some sensor chips.

If the /proc/sys/dev/sensors directory exists and has chip subdirectories (which it will if lm_sensors has been correctly installed and finds the sensor chip on your motherboard), then gkrellm automatically detects this and there will be a "Sensors" configuration option in the config window. Likewise there will be the Sensors config if FreeBSD detects a sensor chip. NetBSD uses the envsys(4) interface and sensors reading is automatically enabled if you have either a lm(4) or viaenv(4) chip configured in your kernel.

Temperature and fan sensor data may be displayed on a panel below the Proc panel, or may be displayed on the CPU and Proc panels. Voltage data is always displayed on a panel below the Proc panel.

On the Setup page enter a Label next to a temperature or fan Sensor File to make GKrellM display the data from that sensor. If the label is one of the reserved name labels, then the data display will appear on a CPU or Proc panel. The lower case reserved name labels are "cpu" and "mb" where the "mb" label is for displaying on the Proc panel. If you have a SMP machine, then the labels must be "cpu0", "cpu1", etc and you must be displaying real cpu charts.

For example, if you want readings from sensor file temp1 and/or sensor file fan1 to show up on the CPU panel, then enter "cpu" as the label for both temp1 and fan1. If you want the readings to show up on the Proc panel, then enter "mb" as the labels.

Displaying temperature and fan sensors on the CPU and Proc panels can save some vertical space in GKrellM. However, if labels other than the reserved labels are entered then the temperature or fan data will be displayed on a separate panel. If you wish to have a reserved label appear on the separate panel, prepend an underscore. For example, use "_cpu".

There is a separate Voltages config page where voltages may be enabled. Voltages always have a label assigned. The default voltage labels may be overridden on the Setup page.

If you set up to monitor both a temperature and a fan on the CPU or Proc panel, they can be displayed optionally as an alternating single display or as separate displays. If separate, the fan display will replace the panel label. The configuration for this is under the CPU and Proc config pages.

In the Setup page for the Sensors config you also enter any correction factors and offsets for each of the sensors you are monitoring. This is the same configuration information you would have to set up in /etc/sensors.conf if gkrellm were linked against the lm_sensor library. See below for an explanation of converting lm_sensor compute lines to GKrellM correction factors and offsets.

Note for NetBSD users:
    The current implementation of the sensor reading under NetBSD opens /dev/sysmon and never closes it. Since that device does not support concurrent accesses, you won't be able to run other apps such as envstat(8) while GKrellM is running. This might change if this happens to be an issue.

    The reasons for this choice are a) efficiency (though it might be possible to open/close /dev/sysmon each time a reading is needed without major performance issue) and b) as of october 2001, there's a bug in the envsys(4) driver which sometimes causes deadlocks when processes try to access simultaneoulsy /dev/sysmon (see NetBSD PR#14368). A (quick and dirty) workaround for this is to monopolize the driver :)

  CPU/Motherboard Temperatures

You can calibrate temperature readings by setting a correction factor and offset for each temperature file.

You have to decide via your motherboard manual or inspection which temperature file corresponds to which CPU or motherboard and it may help to read the lm_sensor documentation. The way I would make the link by inspection (for Linux) is to dump the contents of each temperature file reported under the Sensor configuration tab. Each temperature file should have a single line with three numbers which report temperature over, temperature hysteresis, and measured temperature. It is likely that the temperature file corresponding to the motherboard temperature will have a temperature over and hysteresis less than those in the temperature files for CPU's. You could also try modulating CPU temperatures to see which sensor reading tracks the modulation. For example, with your computer cover off and after warming up to equilibrium, try augmenting cooling on a CPU by blowing additional air on the heatsink. Or maybe try some circuit cooler.

Some motherboards may not provide accurate temperature readings because of various factors, such as variations in sensor contact with the CPU. For these cases, if you care about precise temperature readings, you can enter calibration numbers in the sensors config to correct the raw temperature readings.

To do this calibration, take two real CPU temperature readings corresponding to two sensor reported readings. To get the real readings, you can trust that your motherboard manufacturer has done this calibration and is reporting accurate temperatures in the bios, or you can put a temperature probe directly on your CPU case (if possible and safe). I would guess the motherboard temperature will not need calibration, but you could check with a temperature probe.

Here is a sample CPU calibration procedure. Make sure gkrellm is configured with default factors of 1.0 and offsets of 0 and is reporting temperatures in centigrade:

1 • Boot up the machine cold and read a real temperature T1 from the bios or a temperature probe. If reading from the bios, boot as quickly as possible and record a sensor temperature S1 as reported by gkrellm.

2 • Allow the CPU to run and heat up to equilibrium. Record sensor temperature S2 and real temperature T2. If reading real temps from the bios, you have to shutdown and reboot into the bios quickly before temperatures drift.

3 • Now you can calculate the correction factor and offset you need to enter into the Sensor configuration tab:

    From:
    s - S1     t - T1
    ------  =  ------
    S2 - S1    T2 - T1
             T2 - T1     S2*T1 - S1*T2
    t  = s * -------  +  -------------
             S2 - S1         S2 - S1
    So:
              T2 - T1                S2*T1 - S1*T2
    factor =  -------      offset =  -------------
              S2 - S1                   S2 - S1

Note: ideally, the temperature measurements should each be made at equilibrium and in the above example, the T1 S1 reading will probably not be an equilibrium reading. Maybe a pair of readings with the cpu idling as much as possible and then running something like cpuburn could be made. See Freshmeat for cpuburn, and read the cautions. Anyway, these are just some ideas. I'm not actually recommending that anyone try sticking temperature probes inside their machines.

  Voltage Sensor Corrections

Motherboard voltage measurements are made by a variety of sensor chips which are capable of measuring a small positive voltage. GKrellM can display these voltage values and can apply a correction factor, offset, and for the negative voltages of some chips (lm80), a level shifting reference voltage to the displayed voltage. There are four cases to consider:

1 • Low valued positive voltages may be directly connected to the input pins of the sensor chip and therefore need no correction. For these, the correction factor should be 1.0 and the offset should be 0.

2 • Higher valued positive voltages will be connected to the input pins of the sensor chip through a 2 resistor attenuation circuit. For these, the correction factor will be a ratio of the resistor values and the offset will be 0.

3 • Negative voltages will be connected to the input pins of the sensor through a 2 resistor attenuation circuit with one of the resistors connected to a positive voltage to effect a voltage level shift. For these (lm80), the correction factor and offset will be ratios of the resistor values, and a reference voltage must be used.

4 • Some sensor chips (w83782, lm78) are designed to handle negative inputs without requiring an input resistor connected to a voltage reference. For these, there will be a correction factor and a possible offset.

    For cases 2 and 3, the sensor chip input network looks like:
        Vs o----/\/\/---o-------------o Vin
                 R1     |
                        o--/\/\/--o Vref
                            R2

where,

    Vs  is the motherboard voltage under measurment

    Vin is the voltage at the input pin of the sensor chip and therefore is the voltage reading that will need correction.

    Vref
        is a level shifting voltage reference. For case 2, Vref is ground or zero. For case 3, Vref will be one of the positive motherboard voltages.

The problem then is to compute correction factors and offsets as a function of R1 and R2 so that GKrellM can display a computed motherboard voltage Vs as a function of a measured voltage Vin.

Since sensor chip input pins are high impedance, current into the pins may be assumed to be zero. In that case, the current through R1 equals current through R2, and we have:

        (Vs - Vin)/R1 = (Vin - Vref)/R2
    Solving for Vs as a function of Vin:
        Vs = Vin * (1 + R1/R2)  -  (R1/R2) * Vref
    So, the correction factor is:  1 + R1/R2
        the correction offset is:  - (R1/R2)
        Vref is specified in the config separately from
        the offset (for chips that need it).

Fortunately there seems to be a standard set of resistor values used for the various sensor chips which are documented in the lm_sensor documentation. The GKrellM sensor corrections are similar to the compute lines you find with lm_sensors, with the difference that lm_sensors has an expression evaluator which does not require that compute lines be simplified to the single factor and offset required by GKrellM. But you can easily calculate the factor and offset. For example, this lm_sensor compute line for a case 2 voltage:

        compute in3 ((6.8/10)+1)*@ ,  @/((6.8/10)+1)

yields a correction factor of ((6.8/10)+1) = 1.68 and an offset of zero.

Note that the second compute line expression is not relevant in GKrellM because there is never any need to invert the voltage reading calculation. Also, the compute line '@' symbol represents the Vin voltage.

A more complicated compute line for a case 3 voltage:

        compute in5 (160/35.7)*(@ - in0) + @, ...
    can be rewritten:
        compute in5 (1 + 160/35.7)*@ - (160/35.7)*in0, ...
    so the correction factor is  (1 + 160/35.7) = 5.48
    and the correction offset is -(160/35.7) = -4.48
    and the voltage reference Vref is in0

Here is a table of correction factors and offsets based on some typical compute line entries from /etc/sensors.conf:

           Compute line                 Factor  Offset  Vref
           -------------------------------------------------
    lm80   in0 (24/14.7 + 1) * @        2.633     0       -
           in2 (22.1/30 + 1) * @        1.737     0       -
           in3 (2.8/1.9) * @            1.474     0       -
           in4 (160/30.1 + 1) * @       6.316     0       -
           in5 (160/35.7)*(@-in0) + @   5.482    -4.482  in0
           in6 (36/16.2)*(@-in0) + @    3.222    -2.222  in0
    LM78   in3 ((6.8/10)+1)*@           1.68      0       -
           in4 ((28/10)+1)*@            3.8       0       -
           in5 -(210/60.4)*@           -3.477     0       -
           in6 -(90.9/60.4)*@          -1.505     0       -
    w83782 in5 (5.14 * @) - 14.91       5.14    -14.91    -
           in6 (3.14 * @) -  7.71       3.14     -7.71    -

  Command launching

Many monitors can be set up to launch a command when you click on the monitor label. When a command is configured for a monitor, its label is converted into a button which becomes visible when the mouse enters the panel or meter area of the label.

You can use the command launching feature to run commands related to monitoring functions, or you may use it to have a convenient launch for any command. Since gkrellm is usually made sticky, you can have easy access to several frequently used commands from any desktop. This is intended to be a convenience and a way to maximize utilization of screen real estate and not a replacement for more full featured command launching from desktops such as Gnome or KDE or others. Some launch ideas for some monitors could be:

calendar:
    gnomecal, evolution, or ical

CPU:
    xterm -e top or gps or gtop

inet:
    gftp or xterm -e ftpwho

net:
    mozilla, galeon, skipstone, or xterm -e slrn -C-

And so on... Tooltips can be set up for these commands.

  Alerts

The sensor and APM monitors can have alerts configured to give warnings and alarms for data readings which range outside of configurable limits. A warning or alarm consists of an attention grabbing decal appearing and an optional command being executed.

Additionally, if you have the gvoice plugin and the ViaVoice libraries from IBM installed, a voice alert may be configured to get your attention.

THEMES

A theme is a directory containing image files and a gkrellmrc configuration file. The directory should be installed as a subdirectory under your ~/.gkrellm/themes directory or under /usr/local/share/gkrellm/themes. Themes for gkrellm can be downloaded from http://www.muhri.net and once untarred can be selected from the Themes configuration tab.

gkrellm also searches /usr/X11R6/share/gkrellm/themes for any system wide themes installed as part of a distribution. Finally, a theme you simply want to check out can be untarred anywhere and used by running:

    gkrellm -t path_to_theme

If you are interested in writing a theme, go to the Themes page at http://www.gkrellm.net and there you will find a Theme making reference.

PLUGINS

gkrellm tries to load all plugins (shared object files ending in .so) it finds in your plugin directory ~/.gkrellm/plugins. The directories /usr/local/lib/gkrellm/plugins and /usr/X11R6/libexec/gkrellm/plugins are also searched for plugins to install. For compatibility with pre 1.0.6 versions, plugins from the directories /usr/local/share/gkrellm/plugins and /usr/X11R6/libexec/gkrellm/plugins are still installed, but this is not compatible with the FHS.

Some plugins may be available only as source files and they will have to be compiled before installation. There should be instructions for doing this with each plugin that comes in source form.

If you are interested in writing a plugin, go to the Plugins page at http://www.gkrellm.net and there you will find a Plugin programmers reference.

FILES

~/.gkrellm
    User gkrellm directory were are located configuration files, user's plugins and user's themes.

~/.gkrellm/plugins
    User plugin directory.

/usr/X11R6/libexec/gkrellm/plugins
    System wide plugin directory.

/usr/local/lib/gkrellm/plugins
    Local plugin directory.

~/.gkrellm/themes
    User theme directory.

/usr/X11R6/share/gkrellm/themes
    System wide theme directory.

/usr/local/share/gkrellm/themes
    Local theme directory.

AUTHORS
Bill Wilson <bill@gkrellm.net>. http://www.gkrellm.net/

SEE ALSO
fstab(5), sudo(1), mount(8), pppd(8), umount(8)