(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I read through this thread a few times now, and oddly have come to the conclusion that a monitor for running processes is actually a lot more useful as a diagnostic tool than a CPU meter.

A few things about xload and CPU meters:

* I use puppy for web browsing, often with many pages opened. Xload increases before my PC gets unresponsive. It is a very useful information. Until I read this thred, I never knew how it detects it, but I used it.

* For a very long time, I didnt pay attention to the white lines across it. It took me *very* long to realize that these are the scales and thus their number is more important than the graph itself. - I believe a tooltip saying how the graph should be read and what it means is VERY important and it should be included in the next version of puppy.

* If anybody wants to monitor the CPU usage, I recommend running a console and calling "top". It is a standard unix command that gives info about processes sorted by CPU usage, about memory usage and similar things. If you dont know it, just try it! I believe this info about managing your processes should be in all starter guides.

I believe a tooltip saying how the graph should be read and what it means is VERY important and it should be included in the next version of puppy.

Yes, good point. freememapplet needs the same thing. But I don't think jwm can provide tooltips for swallowed items though, so you'd either need to modify jwm or xload and freememapplet, or perhaps run them via alltray or something...

I believe this info about managing your processes should be in all starter guides.

Yes, although you shouldn't really need to know it. Puppy should just work

asdf42 wrote:* If anybody wants to monitor the CPU usage, I recommend running a console and calling "top". It is a standard unix command that gives info about processes sorted by CPU usage, about memory usage and similar things. If you dont know it, just try it! I believe this info about managing your processes should be in all starter guides.

I use top regularly. But it should be noted that the implementation Puppy uses is the cut down version included in busybox. The real thing has a much larger feature set. See http://linux.die.net/man/1/top

I have Ubuntu in another partition on the box that runs Puppy, and copied Ubuntu's full version over for use in Puppy.
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Dennis

Now the question is, is there a similar app that DOES graph CPU usage, and can be used in JWM?
There is xloadtime, which is a fork of xload, that can display an extra bar for it, but it doesn't show a graph over time, just a single bar per CPU.

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Somebody found some sort of easy tool for making tray apps a while ago and several apps were made - one of them may have been for CPU usage.
I think this was in the thread for 2.14R or something - can anybody remember?

disciple

Is this the one? http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44986

I still have it installed on my old machine.

No, at least not the first version posted there. As I described there, it seems to show the CPU speed, so is useful on a laptop or something with dynamic CPU scaling or whatever it's called..
I can't remember for sure what the "modified" version there shows, but from my second comment it sounds like it isn't conventional "cpu usage" either.

If I haven't imagined it and there really was one, I think it was about the same time as that post though... maybe a couple of months later.

I upgraded to 5.1.1 yesterday. I was concerned about my red blob, which I thought was a cpu meter! Today, my red blob has 5 lines, 4 of which are full. My computer runs fine, but I am wondering why I have so many threads! (Do I have a lot, it seems like it)

Asus M3N78 Pro
AMD Phenom Quad-Core @ 2.6 Ghz
3 GB RAM

proximityinfotech1 wrote:Now the question is, is there a similar app that DOES graph CPU usage, and can be used in JWM?

There is gatotray, a proper trayapp http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 173#493173
Or there is what Hairywill described above, which I seemed to miss at the time.

a monitor for running processes is actually a lot more useful as a diagnostic tool than a CPU meter.

Exactly so.
Sometimes the meter is maxed out, a solid block . . .
This means both of my dual cores are occupied.
I should know why . . . I might be watching a video and doing some other task simultaneously . . .

Yesterday the meter was as streaky as bacon
(white lines)
Which indicated that several threads were running
Why? Been doing some pretend programming . . .

By running Htop (Menu / System / System Status and Config in Puppy 5.3 or command line 'top') I could work out what they were . . .
'Restart X' cleared these still running threads . . .

Lobster - I presume you are talking about a CPU usage meter in your first paragraph, and xload in your second paragraph...

WOW, i have never checked this thread out, WOW. Wasn't expecting it to be so long. I always setup conky, Didn't know what that thing in the tray was.

banger0250 wrote:WOW, i have never checked this thread out, WOW. Wasn't expecting it to be so long. I always setup conky, Didn't know what that thing in the tray was.

same here, but I know how to fix it... /proc has a file that does show the 1,5 and 15 minute load average (I'm in my Droid, so can't check). Just use it to generate the image (there is an equivalent c function too) I wrote a script that will generate an xpm image with text and a percent bar which could be used by pnmmon or other generalized tray apps.

Yes, we discussed some solutions like that earlier in the thread, and also a ready-made tray-app (gatotray). But that isn't "fixing" anything . Xload is very useful as it is, and the point in this thread is so that people understand it.

Xload is very useful as it is

Agreed.

A tooltip should be easy to implement?
Recently in using Openshot (still flakey in 1.4 but improving) the white threads grow in number telling me when it is likely to break and need a reboot. Just using restart of x I still found remaining threads running.
Invaluable.

technosaurus wrote: I wrote a script that will generate an xpm image with text and a percent bar which could be used by pnmmon or other generalized tray apps.

I seem to recall seeing a couple of threads where you mentioned something like a special monitoring mechanism you wrote for a variety of activities (not just cpu activity) but can't put my finger on it at the moment. Did I understand it correctly that your method allows a variety of different 'things' to be monitored and reflected in the tray?

greengeek wrote:

technosaurus wrote: I wrote a script that will generate an xpm image with text and a percent bar which could be used by pnmmon or other generalized tray apps.

I seem to recall seeing a couple of threads where you mentioned something like a special monitoring mechanism you wrote for a variety of activities (not just cpu activity) but can't put my finger on it at the moment. Did I understand it correctly that your method allows a variety of different 'things' to be monitored and reflected in the tray?

Simple Icon Tray:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=76431

It simply monitors the images and tooltips files for changes and updates them as needed. Any number of separate process(es) can be used to generate/update the images and tooltip text. The left click and right click commands are static (not monitored), but you can make them symlinks that point to whatever executable you want to run at the time.

Though rather than using my xpm generator; I'd recommend svg for adding text now that jwm can do svg... you can even include a png image inside of an svg with shapes and/or text over it .

now that jwm can do svg

Hang on - does SIT use JWM?