New Linux User

HOWTO: Monitor System Performance With gDesklets

by Jon on November 23rd, 2005

This is the final part of a three part series on monitoring your system using various applications. I’ve already covered how to monitor your system using Superkaramba and GKrellm and now I’m going to do the same using gDesklets.

gDesklets is a Gnome-based widget application, but as with most applications today, that heritage is heritage only. I am running gDesklets on KDE without a problem.

Installing gDesklets

Many systems come with gDesklets 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 gdesklets or
• In an RPM system: yum install gdesklets or
• Download the source code tarball from the gDesklets site. For help on compiling and installing a program from source, click here.

Installing Sensors into gDesklets

Every widget package has their own names for the little colourful applications they provide. gDesklets is no different in this respect, and gDesklet widgets are called either displays or sensors. There is a large selection of displays and sensors on the gDesklets site. I find the gDesklets site to be the easiest to operate between Superkaramba and gDesklets.

Like Superkaramba, sensors and displays are distributed in ‘tarballs’ that have either been gzipped or bzipped. However, that’s where the similarity ends. There’s no need to ‘untar’ a sensor tarball with gDesklets, you simply have to point it out and gDesklets will take care of the rest.

The cool thing is that gDesklets can install a package from the local machine or from the Internet. There are two different menu items for this:

• Select Install package to open up a file system browse window to locate a package that is on your local machine.
• Select Install remote package to open up an address dialogue box. Plunk in the URI of a sensor from the gDesklets site (or any other site for that matter) and gDesklets will download it and install it for you

This is by far one of the coolest things about gDesklets.

Managing gDesklets

I didn’t include this section in the Superkaramba or GKrellm entries because those two applications are pretty self-explanatory. gDesklets has a little more power, though, and a quick trip through the management application might be useful.

You can enter the management console thingy by right-clicking on the gDesklets puzzle-piece logo in your system tray (see first image in this entry). The left-side pane displays the categories of installed sensors. gDesklets makes this list up itself as you install sensors. If you don’t like that view, there’s a drop down list box on the top of the left pane that allows you to change the view.

As mentioned, you can install sensors and displays directly from the Internet using the File -> Install remote package option. Once you’ve installed a package (either remotely or locally) highlight it, and then click File -> Run selected desklet. There is a further menu option to Run (remote) desklet but I’ve never had any success with that item. Likely I misunderstand its use.

Final Words

Once again, I had no luck with any sensors that were supposed to display temperatures or fan speeds to me. Again this is likely because I am missing the required acpi modules on my system. However, that doesn’t deter me from preferring gDesklets out of the three I’ve looked at. The Install remote package function is seriously the most useful thing I’ve seen in a long time. I can simply browse for sensors and when I find one that I’d like to try, I just right-click to copy the URI, plunk it into gDesklets and voila! There’s my new sensor. No downloading, untarring, opening, and activating…very slick.

There are displays for gDesklets that will monitor logs, feeds, system info, and everything else under the sun. I recommend taking a look through the site and playing around with some of them.

I should mention that, if nothing else, this series of articles pointed out to me that I really should stop ignoring the acpi thing and see if I can get it working on my system. If I’m successful, I’ll post my results.

Enjoy!

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