New Linux User

HOWTO: Monitor System Performance with Superkaramba.

by Jon on November 21st, 2005

This is the second of a three part series on how to use different applications to monitor some system functions. I’ve already discussed how to use GKrellm, and in this article I will discuss Superkaramba. Superkaramba is a ‘widget’ application that supports the display of various small applications on your desktop. The vast majority of the widgets available are of the system monitor type ilk, but there is a very large selection of all types over on KDE-Look under the Karamba section. On that note, I should point out that the Superkaramba homepage is bizarrely bereft of widgets. KDE-Look is the place to get them.

I’ve used Superakaramba on and off in the past. I go through phases where I want all the eye-candy I can get my eyes on, and then I want to get rid of it all because it’s too clunky. To be sure, every widget will consume some resources so unless your system has tons of RAM and processing speed, you might want to limit your widgets to 3 or 4.

Installing Superkaramba

Many systems come with Superkaramba installed out of the box, but if yours isn’t one of them you can get it by:

• In a Debian system: apt-get install superkaramba or
• In an RPM system: yum install superkaramba or
• Download the source code tarball from the Superkaramba site. For help on compiling and installing a program from source, click here.

Installing Themes into Superkaramba

Superkaramba widgets are called themes. The name is a little misleading because generally the word theme refers to the look and feel of an application rather than its functionality. Gkrellm does a good job of separating functionality (by using the terms builtin or plugin) and look and feel (by using the term theme). However, in Superkaramba, the widget comes with its own look and feel and therefore there is no distinction between functionality and look.

Unlike gDesklets, Superkamaba themes can only be installed from the local machine. This means you have to find, download and untar a theme that you would like before you can install it. Every Superkaramba theme I’ve seen has been offered in a tarball (a tar.gz file). You can refer back to the entry on installing source code files if you need help untarring the theme file.

Once you have the theme untarred, start Superkaramba if you haven’t already done so or click on the Bomb icon in your system tray if Superkarama is already running. If you just started Superkaramba then you’ll be presented with the splash screen and from there you can click on the Open link and browse your file system for the desired theme.

NOTE: When browsing for a theme, you want to locate and click on the .theme file within the desired theme directory. Depending on how the widget was created, there may be multiple .theme files. Each one will either offer different functionality (like a different set of system sensors) or the same functionality but in different colours or layout.

If you opened Superkaramba by clicking on the Bomb icon in your system tray, then you will be presented with the list of currently running themes in a dialogue box (stupidly, I have no picture of this window). There is an Open button on the bottom left of this window. Clicking it will open a file system browse window - use this to navigate to your desired theme and double-click the .theme file.

Final Words

Once again I was unable to find a temperature of fan speed theme that worked for me. As with Gkrellm, I suspect this failure is due to the absence of acpi modules on my system rather than a failing on the part of the Superkaramba widget. However, if knowing what’s going on under the hood is your concern, then Superkaramba can give you much more information that Gkrellm.

I selected two themes that I frequently use to keep an eye on the two most important aspects of my system: my system log and my network activity. These two themes are called Ryolog and Netstat respectively (searching for those terms on KDE-Look will turn them up for you):

Ryolog monitoring my system log

Netstat monitoring my netstat log

These are but two examples of the many informative widgets available for Superkaramba. If I were you, I’d schedule a half a day just to browse the huge repository and play with what’s available.

On a final note: once you get Superkaramba set up just the way you like, it would be nice if it would start up that way every time you started your desktop environment. If your desktop environment is saving your session when you log off then this will happen automatically. If not, you may need to follow the directions here (KDE explanation only - looking for Gnome expanation!) to make Superkaramba start ever time.

Reader Ganesh contributes how to automatically start applications at boot time in Gnome:

Thanks, Ganesh!

Enjoy!

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