Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Mike Walsh]

"BIT METER OS" 0.7.6 (stable)


Hello, everyone.

We ALL spend a lot of time in the browser nowadays, don't we? If you're anything like me, you can quickly find yourself gobbling up several GB's of data without really trying. Not everybody is lucky enough to have an unlimited data-plan. Those of us in Puppy-Land probably less than most, since many of us are operating older, low-end equipment anyway.....and some may be operating on a tight budget, or have a set 'cap' on our data-plans. Especially those of us using mobile broadband dongles, given that the ISPs tend to charge outrageous amounts for data purchased in this manner.

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At home, we have a data limit of 20 Gb/month on our service with British Telecom, here in the UK. Sounds quite generous, doesn't it? Believe me, you've only got to download a few .isos, watch a few videos, or stream live radio or TV for a few hours per day, and that SOON disappears; like magic!

Accordingly, about a year ago, I started hunting around for an app that would monitor my broadband usage in 'real-time'. That would show a graphical representation of data used, IN 'real-time'. That would summarise usage not only daily, but weekly, or monthly, or even yearly. That would allow the user to set an alarm, to warn you when you're approaching your monthly limit. And other network-related stuff.

After 2 or 3 days of Googling, I found it. On the 'CodeBox' website, belonging to an absolute genius of a guy by the name of Rob Dawson. It's not widely publicised; I don't know why, because Rob has written most of the cross-platform utilities on his site with a view to making them as small & tidy as possible. Which makes them attractive to those of us using Puppy, where RAM usage is, for many, a real issue.

I, personally, am running this on a 10-yr old Compaq desktop; Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPU, 3 GB RAM, close to a terabyte of total storage....but this is definitely not a 'RAM hog'. It uses approx 800k-1 MB, tops.so.....it shouldn't pose any problems for those of you on lower-spec hardware.

Having said all THAT, I just wanted to share this with the community, in case anybody's interested.

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"BitMeterOS"


You can find it here, on this page:-

http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeteros/downloads


Many of us will want the Linux 32-bit version. There IS a 64-bit version, for those that require it.

As it currently stands, the version you will probably want is the 'stable' one (currently 0.7.6). The experimental version (0.8.0) is a wee bit 'buggy', apparently; haven't yet tried it myself.....feel free to do so if you're adventurous. Let us know how it works, please.

The file is in the form of a .deb file. I use this in Tahrpup, Slacko 570, and ETP's obPrecise 14.07.26 'ChromeBook' Pup. It installs without a murmur.

MikeB tells me that it installed in Lucid, with just a little bit of tinkering. Moat & bigpup also seem quite pleased with it. Now, it's no use asking me to provide .pets, .sfs's and the like, 'cos I'm NOT a programmer, or coder. I'm simply passing on the information, you understand. However, I believe it's not TOO hard to create .pets.....

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BitMeterOS also measures data used by your LAN. The only snag I can see with this, is that it doesn't differentiate between broadband, and non-broadband usage. (??)

However, it's a useful enough app to be able to 'work round' small niggles like that.

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PROGRESS REPORTS



OscarTalks has produced a .pet of the experimental version, 0.8.0:-

http://smokey01.com/OscarTalks

See post#16, top of page 2, for more info.

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Geoffrey has modified a 'workaround' originally produced by mavrothal, which ensures BitMeter 0.8.0 re-starts the database logging function at each boot.

See post#26, page 2, for more details, and a download of the 'xbitmeter.tar.gz':-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=26

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Geoffrey has now also produced a .pet of the experimental version, 0.8.0, for general use on most 32-bit Pups; it includes the xbitmeter auto-start routine.

See post #39, page 3, for more details, and the download link:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=39

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Geoffrey has now produced a 64-bit .pet of BitMeter-OS 0.8.0. Xbitmeter auto-start routine included.

See post #52, page 4, for further details, and the download link:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=51

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A method has now been worked out for linking multiple Puppies to a common BitMeterOS database, thereby enabling you to add together bandwidth usage from different OSs for an overall monthly total. This equates to a Puppy version of Rob Dawson's 'bmsync' utility.....so this method performs the same task, but in a different way.....and without the need to query from one OS to another.

This is the very thing I'd been trying to achieve with BitMeter from day one of using it...

This started with davids45's query, @ post # 89:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=89

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Further to the above comment, Geoffrey has now produced a pair of .pets which will assist you to set up the location of your common database for use with multiple Pups on the same hard drive (or the same machine, if you have more than one hard drive; it'll work via Puppy's sym-link capability).

For the BitMeter 0.7.6 version (32-bit), see post #141, page 10:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=141


For the BitMeter 0.8.0 version (32-bit), see post #132, page 9:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99025&start=132

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An alternate mirror for these can be found here.


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When it's installed (by whatever means takes your fancy), open your web browser of choice. Once you're 'up & running', enter THIS into the address bar:-

http://localhost:2605/index.html

Within a matter of seconds, the BitMeterOS web interface should appear. Once it has, BOOKMARK it.....so you can find it easily. Goes without saying, really.

Then.....explore. You can do all sorts of 'stuff' with this app; see a graphical representation of your usage, see your history, for as far back as you like (obviously, as far back as the point when it was installed). You can get a summary in daily, monthly and yearly output. You can set 'reminders', to inform you when you're getting close to your limit. You can even play around with the appearance of the app itself.

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For those of you with the desire to experiment, Rob Dawson does have, somewhere on his 'CodeBox' site, a utility called 'bmsync'. This utility should enable you to collect and add together the data summaries of multiple OS's by querying across the LAN. Personally, I've never been able to get this to work, but it's probably something silly that just needs a bit of attention. Those of you who are 'at home' with the terminal will in all likelihood have this up-and-running in no time.

If anybody SHOULD manage it, please let me know how you achieved it. I'd LOVE to know.

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Hope this proves to be of some use to some of you!


Regards,

Mike Walsh.


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Pups so far known to work with BitMeterOS (both versions)

32-bit:-

'TahrPup' 6.02
'Slacko' 5.7.0
OBPrecise 14.07.26 'ChromeBook' Pup (v.1 & v.2)
'Carolina'
'Vanguard'
'Lucid'
412
D-Pup 'Wheezy'
'Racy' 5.2.9
'Wary' 5.5
X-Slacko 2.1
'Puppex' 6.0 (have I spelt that correctly?)
'Slacko' 5.9.3
'LXPupTahr' 15.03.2
'Precise' 5.7.1
X-Slacko 2.3.2


64-bit:-

'Slacko64' 5.9.1
'Wary64' 6.99
'LXpup64'
'Tahr64 6.05'
'Lighthouse64' ('Mariner' Edition)

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(14/05/15) I feel I should echo here what has been discovered during testing and development so far; some people have found that the original .deb file (from the 'CodeBox' website) seems to work for them, where the .pet file doesn't. If you've tried one of the .pets produced so far, and nothing happens (or doesn't work as expected)...go to the original download link, download the .deb file directly, and try with that. It will help to go into /var/lib and delete the 'bitmeter' directory before you install afresh.

(16/05/15) Might be worth mentioning that I don't know whether or not Geoffrey's 64-bit .pet will work with the FatDog64 series. As far as I can tell, jamesbond and kirk have constructed the filesystem on these somewhat differently.....so you may need to post on the FatDog threads/forums to get a definitive answer to this.

[mikeb]

Very efficient posting young Mike.

Just to add got it working as we speak in puppy 4.12 and firefox 3.6.
There is a command line client too for those wanting to make say a gtkdialo interface.
This is just great and desrves a (scaled) sceen shot

I could knock up an sfs for testing and post it here....

mike

[Mike Walsh]

Hallo, Mike!

[mikeb]

See you have to give the eyecandy round here to get attention.

Ok sfs4
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3rjuwskl708k1p2/BitmeterOS_sfs4.sfs?dl=1

sfs3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hra4qe1f1lkzs3k/BitmeterOS_uni.sfs?dl=1

for testing purposes with generic start scripts and defaultbrowser used.

mike

[Mike Walsh]

That's OK, Mike.

All contributions gratefully received! I don't mind anybody helping to make this more usable, for as many people as want to use it. I'm not a programmer, or 'coder'; I'm pretty new to Linux, as you know. But the whole idea of this thread is to make this as 'usable' as possible, for as many Puppy variants as we can.

Cheers for that! A good start...


Mike to Mike.

[mikeb]

I got myself in a weird permissions tangle... cannot get the web interface working on lucid even though it did before... its causing a sore head...

time to eat I think

Well nice one for making the thread

mike

[Geoffrey]

[mikeb]

well i did the url boogie... the log file was not being written... the original deb has everything owned by 1000:1000 ... I had it all running just by after using deb2sfs manually creating the missing log folder i assume as root.... but somewhere along the line its all now a bit of a mess...similar effect to that which causes the cups interface to not show...web servers are particular beasties. One folder with the wrong owner is probably the problem...the command line stuff works 100%.

A fresh head and a clean out of the save folder will probably bring it all back to happiness.

mike

[OscarTalks]

[mikeb]

[Mike Walsh]

[Mike Walsh]

Deleted:- *Duplicate*

[Mike Walsh]

[Mike Walsh]

Just installed BitMeterOS 0.8.0 (the experimental version), from the .deb file.

Installed without a murmur, just as the previous one did.....after a re-boot, following removal of the older version (just to be on the safe side).

So far, looking very good. As Oscar says, this version differentiates between internet downloads, and all downloads (which will include any LAN usage). Handy for me, as I do quite a bit of back-and-forth file transfer work with Samba-TNG; prior to this, I simply couldn't tell how much of the total was which...

I think I shall be keeping this one; although 0.7.6 is still in my 'Utilities' directory.....just in case!


Regards,

Mike.

[Mike Walsh]