conky

Description

Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on torsmo. Since its inception, Conky has changed significantly from its predecessor, while maintaining simplicity and configurability. Conky can display just about anything, either on your root desktop or in its own window. Not only does Conky have many built-in objects, it can also display just about any piece of information by using scripts and other external programs.

Conky has more than 250 built in objects, including support for a plethora of OS stats (uname, uptime, CPU usage, mem usage, disk usage, "top" like process stats, and network monitoring, just to name a few), built in IMAP and POP3 support, built in support for many popular music players (MPD, XMMS2, BMPx, Audacious), and much much more. Conky can display this info either as text, or using simple progress bars and graph widgets, with different fonts and colours.

We are always looking for help, whether its reporting bugs, writing patches, or writing docs. Please use the facilities at SourceForge to make bug reports, feature requests, and submit patches, or stop by #conky on irc.freenode.net if you have questions or want to contribute.

Thanks for your interest in Conky.

Compiling

For users compiling from source on a binary distro, make sure you have the X development libraries installed (Unless you configure your build without X11). This should be a package along the lines of "libx11-dev" or "xorg-x11-dev" for X11 libs, and similar "-dev" format for the other libs required (depending on your build options). You should be able to see which extra packages you need to install by reading errors that you get from running `cmake'. The easiest way to view the available build options is to run `ccmake' or `cmake-gui' from the source tree, but be careful when disabling certain features as you may lose desired functionality. E.g., with BUILD_MATH disabled you won't get errors but logarithmic graphs will be normal graphs and gauges will miss their line.

Conky has (for some time) been available in the repositories of most popular distributions. Here are some installation instructions for a few:

Gentoo users -- Conky is in Gentoo's Portage... simply use "emerge app-admin/conky" for installation.

Debian, etc. users -- Conky should be in your repositories, and can be installed by doing "aptitude install conky".

Example to compile and run Conky with default components (note that some build options may differ for your system):

cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:string=/usr .
make
make install # Optional
src/conky

Conky has been tested to be compatible with C99 C and C++0x C++, however it has not been tested with anything other than gcc, and is not guaranteed to work with other compilers.

TIP: Try configuring Conky with `ccmake' or `cmake-gui' instead of just `cmake'.

You Should Know

Conky is generally very good on resources. That said, the more you try to make Conky do, the more resources it is going to consume.

An easy way to force Conky to reload your ~/.config/conky/conky.conf: "killall -SIGUSR1 conky". Saves you the trouble of having to kill and then restart. You can now also do the same with SIGHUP.

Options

Command line options override configurations defined in configuration file.

-a | --alignment= ALIGNMENT: Text alignment on screen, {top,bottom,middle}_{left,right,middle} or none. Can also be abbreviated with first chars of position, ie. tr for top_right. Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-b | --double-buffer: Use double buffering (eliminates "flicker"). Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-c | --config= FILE: Config file to load instead of $HOME/.config/conky/conky.conf
-C | --print-config: Print builtin default config to stdout. See also the section EXAMPLES for more information. Only available with build flag BUILD_BUILTIN_CONFIG enabled.
-d | --daemonize: Daemonize Conky, aka fork to background.
-D | --debug: Increase debugging output, ie. -DD for more debugging.
-f | --font= FONT: Font to use. Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-h | --help: Prints command line help and exits.
-i COUNT: Number of times to update Conky (and quit).
-o | --own-window: Create own window to draw. Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-p | --pause= SECONDS: Time to pause/wait before actually starting Conky.
-q | --quiet: Run Conky in 'quiet mode' (ie. no output).
-t | --text= TEXT: Text to render, remember single quotes, like -t ' $uptime '
-u | --interval= SECONDS: Update interval.
-v | -V | --version: Prints version, build information and general info. Exits after printing.
-w | --window-id= WIN_ID: Window id to draw. Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-x X_COORDINATE: X position
-x X_COORDINATE: X position
-X | --display= DISPLAY: X11 display to use. Only available with build flag BUILD_X11 enabled.
-y Y_COORDINATE: Y position

Configuration Settings

Default configuration file location is $HOME/.config/conky/conky.conf or ${sysconfdir}/conky/conky.conf. On most systems, sysconfdir is /etc, and you can find the sample config file there (/etc/conky/conky.conf).

You might want to copy it to $HOME/.config/conky/conky.conf and then start modifying it. Other configs can be found at http://conky.sf.net/

alignment: Aligned position on screen, may be top_left, top_right, top_middle, bottom_left, bottom_right, bottom_middle, middle_left, middle_middle, middle_right, or none (also can be abreviated as tl, tr, tm, bl, br, bm, ml, mm, mr). See also gap_x and gap_y.
append_file: Append the file given as argument.
background: Boolean value, if true, Conky will be forked to background when started.
border_inner_margin: Inner border margin in pixels (the margin between the border and text).
border_outer_margin: Outer border margin in pixels (the margin between the border and the edge of the window).
border_width: Border width in pixels.
colorN: Predefine a color for use inside conky.text segments. Substitute N by a digit between 0 and 9, inclusively. When specifying the color value in hex, omit the leading hash (#).
console_graph_ticks: A comma-separated list of strings to use as the bars of a graph output to console/shell. The first list item is used for the minimum bar height and the last item is used for the maximum. Example: " ,_,=,#".
cpu_avg_samples: The number of samples to average for CPU monitoring.
default_bar_height: Specify a default height for bars. If not specified, the default value is 6.
default_bar_width: Specify a default width for bars. If not specified, the default value is 0, which causes the bar to expand to fit the width of your Conky window. If you set out_to_console = true, the text version of the bar will actually have no width and you will need to set a sensible default or set the height and width of each bar individually.
default_color: Default color and border color
default_gauge_height: Specify a default height for gauges. If not specified, the default value is 25.
default_gauge_width: Specify a default width for gauges. If not specified, the default value is 40.
default_graph_height: Specify a default height for graphs. If not specified, the default value is 25.
default_graph_width: Specify a default width for graphs. If not specified, the default value is 0, which causes the graph to expand to fit the width of your Conky window. If you set out_to_console = true, the text version of the graph will actually have no width and you will need to set a sensible default or set the height and width of each graph individually.
default_outline_color: Default outline color
default_shade_color: Default shading color and border's shading color
disable_auto_reload: Enable to disable the inotify-based auto config reload feature.
diskio_avg_samples: The number of samples to average for disk I/O monitoring.
display: Specify an X display to connect to.
xinerama_head: Specify a Xinerama head.
double_buffer: Use the Xdbe extension? (eliminates flicker) It is highly recommended to use own window with this one so double buffer won't be so big.
draw_borders: Draw borders around text?
draw_graph_borders: Draw borders around graphs?
draw_outline: Draw outlines?
draw_shades: Draw shades?
extra_newline: Put an extra newline at the end when writing to stdout, useful for writing to awesome's wiboxes.
font: Font name in X, xfontsel can be used to get a nice font
format_human_readable: If enabled, values which are in b

Name

Synopsis

Description

Compiling

You Should Know

Options

Configuration Settings