6 conky - a system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo code, but
13 Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo code.
14 Since it's original conception, Conky has changed a fair bit from it's
15 predecessor. Conky can display just about anything, either on your
16 root desktop or in it's own window. Conky has many built-in objects,
17 as well as the ability to execute programs and scripts, then display
18 the output from stdout.
20 We are always looking for help, and anyone interested in becoming a
21 developer is welcome. Please use the facilities at SourceForge to make
22 bug reports, feature requests, and submit patches.
24 Thanks for your interest in Conky.
27 First, make sure you have the X development libraries installed, this
28 should be a package along the lines of "libx11-dev or xorg-x11-dev".
29 Gentoo users, Conky is in Gentoo's Portage. Simply use "emerge conky"
30 for installation. There is also usually an up-to-date ebuild within
31 Conky's package or in CVS.
33 To compile and run Conky with all optional components:
35 sh autogen.sh # Only required if building from CVS
37 ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man
38 --infodir=/usr/share/info --datadir=/usr/ share --sysconfdir=/etc
39 --localstatedir=/var/lib --enable-double-buffer --enable-own-window
40 --enable-proc-uptime --enable-mpd --enable-xft --enable-seti
46 Conky doesn't probably compile with other compilers than gcc and icc.
47 It doesn't compile with C89 compiler and not even with pure C99. It
48 uses few things that might not exist: strdup(), strcasecmp(), strn-
49 casecmp(), optarg variable with getopt() and long long (not in C89).
50 Crashes in file system statistics stuff when compiled with icc, I don't
53 You can disable 'drawing to own window' feature in case you don't need
54 it by passing --disable-own-window to configure -script.
58 Conky is generally very good on resources. However, certain objects in
59 Conky are harder on resources then others. In particular, the $tail,
60 $top, $font, and $graph objects are quite costly in comparison to the
63 If you do use them, please do not complain about memory or CPU usage,
64 unless you think something is going seriously wrong (mem leak, et
68 Command line options override configurations defined in configuration
71 -V Prints version and exits
75 Text alignment on screen, {top,bottom}_{left,right} or none
78 -b Use double buffering (eliminates "flicker")
82 Config file to load instead of $HOME/.conkyrc
85 -d Daemonize Conky, aka fork to background
92 -h Prints command line help and exits
95 -o Create own window to draw
99 Text to render, remember single quotes, like -t ' $uptime '
118 CONFIGURATION SETTINGS
119 Default configuration file is $HOME/.conkyrc (can be changed from
120 conky.c among other things). See conkyrc.sample. You might want to copy
121 it to $HOME/.conkyrc and then start modifying it.
124 Aligned position on screen, may be top_left, top_right, bot-
125 tom_left, bottom_right, or none
129 Boolean value, if true, Conky will be forked to background when
134 Set conky on the bottom of all other applications
138 Border margin in pixels
142 Border width in pixels
146 The number of samples to average for CPU monitoring
150 Default color and border color
154 Default shading color and border's shading color
157 default_outline_color
158 Default outline color
162 Use the Xdbe extension? (eliminates flicker) It is highly recom-
163 mended to use own window with this one so double buffer won't be
168 Draw borders around text?
179 font Font name in X, xfontsel can be used to get a nice font
182 gap_x Gap between right or left border of screen, same as passing -x
186 gap_y Gap between top or bottom border of screen, same as passing -y
191 Substract (file system) buffers from used memory?
195 Mail spool for mail checking
199 Minimum size of window
203 Hostname for mldonkey stuff, defaults to localhost
207 Mldonkey port, 4001 default
211 Mldonkey login, default none
215 Mldonkey password, default none
231 The number of samples to average for net data
235 Force UTF8? requires XFT
239 Boolean, create own window to draw?
243 Pad percentages to this many decimals (0 = no padding)
247 Border stippling (dashing) in pixels
251 Total number of times for Conky to update before quitting. Zero
252 makes Conky run forever
256 Update interval in seconds
260 Boolean value, if true, text is rendered in upper case
264 Adds spaces after certain objects to stop them from moving other
265 things around. Note that this only helps if you are using a mono
266 font, such as Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
270 Use Xft (anti-aliased font and stuff)
273 text After this begins text to be formatted on screen
277 Colors are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of them:
278 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Also, http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html
279 [http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html] Color can be also in #rrggbb format
280 (hex). Note that when displaying bytes, power is 1024 and not 1000 so
281 1M really means 1024*1024 bytes and not 1000*1000.
284 IP address for an interface
288 ACPI ac adapter state.
296 ACPI temperature in C.
300 ACPI temperature in F.
304 CPU temperature from therm_adt746x
308 Fan speed from therm_adt746x
312 Right-justify text, with space of N
320 Remaining capacity in ACPI or APM battery. ACPI battery number
321 can be given as argument (default is BAT0).
325 Amount of memory buffered
328 cached Amount of memory cached
332 Change drawing color to color
335 cpu CPU usage in percents
338 cpubar (height),(width)
339 Bar that shows CPU usage, height is bar's height in pixels
342 cpugraph (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour 2)
343 CPU usage graph, with optional colours in hex, minus the #.
347 Download speed in kilobytes
351 Download speed in kilobytes with one decimal
354 downspeedgraph net, (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
356 Download speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #.
359 else Text to show if any of the above are not true
363 Executes a shell command and displays the output in conky. warn-
364 ing: this takes a lot more resources than other variables. I'd
365 recommend coding wanted behaviour in C and posting a patch.
368 execbar shell command
369 Same as exec, except if the first value return is a value
370 between 0-100, it will use that number for a bar. The size for
371 the bar is currently fixed, but that may change in the future.
374 execgraph shell command
375 Same as execbar, but graphs values
378 execi interval, shell command
379 Same as exec but with specific interval. Interval can't be less
380 than update_interval in configuration.
384 Specify a different font. Only applies to one line.
387 freq Returns CPU frequency in MHz
390 freq_g Returns CPU frequency in GHz
393 fs_bar (height),(width) fs
394 Bar that shows how much space is used on a file system. height
395 is the height in pixels. fs is any file on that file system.
399 Free space on a file system available for users.
403 Free percentage of space on a file system available for users.
411 File system used space
415 Horizontal line, height is the height in pixels
419 I2C sensor from sysfs (Linux 2.6). dev may be omitted if you
420 have only one I2C device. type is either in (or vol) meaning
421 voltage, fan meaning fan or temp/tempf (first in C, second in F)
422 meaning temperature. n is number of the sensor. See
423 /sys/bus/i2c/devices/ on your local computer.
427 if PROCESS is running, display everything if_running and the
432 if FILE exists, display everything between if_existing and the
436 if_mounted (mountpoint)
437 if MOUNTPOINT is mounted, display everything between if_mounted
438 and the matching $endif
441 kernel Kernel version
444 linkstatus (interface)
445 Get the link status for wireless connections
449 (1,2,3)> System load average, 1 is for past 1 minute, 2 for past
450 5 minutes and 3 for past 15 minutes.
454 Machine, i686 for example
457 mails Mail count in mail spool. You can use program like fetchmail to
458 get mails from some server using your favourite protocol. See
462 mem Amount of memory in use
465 membar (height),(width)
466 Bar that shows amount of memory in use
469 memmax Total amount of memory
473 Percentage of memory in use
477 total session upload in mb
481 total session download in mb
485 number of shared files
489 total session shared in mb, buggy in some mldonkey versions
493 tcp upload rate in kb/s
497 tcp download rate in kb/s
501 udp upload rate in kb/s
505 udp download rate in kb/s
509 number of completed files
512 ml_ndownloading_files
513 number of downloading files
517 Artist in current MPD song must be enabled at compile
521 Album in current MPD song
524 mpd_bar (height),(width)
525 Bar of mpd's progress
529 Bitrate of current song
533 Playing, stopped, et cetera.
537 Title of current MPD song
553 Percent of song's progress
557 Unread mail count in mail spool.
568 pre_exec shell command
569 Executes a shell command one time before conky displays anything
570 and puts output as text.
574 Total processes (sleeping and running)
578 Running processes (not sleeping), requires Linux 2.6
586 Stippled (dashed) horizontal line
589 swapbar (height),(width)
590 Bar that shows amount of swap in use
593 swap Amount of swap in use
601 Percentage of swap in use
605 System name, Linux for example
609 Move text over by N pixels. See also $voffset.
612 tail logfile, lines interval> Displays last N lines of supplied text
613 text file. If interval is not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's
614 interval. Max of 30 lines. Max of 30 lines can be displayed.
618 Local time, see man strftime to get more information about for-
623 Total download, overflows at 4 GB on Linux with 32-bit arch and
624 there doesn't seem to be a way to know how many times it has
625 already done that before conky has started.
629 This takes arguments in the form:top (name) (number) Basically,
630 processes are ranked from highest to lowest in terms of cpu
631 usage, which is what (num) represents. The types are: "name",
632 "pid", "cpu", and mem". There can be a max of 10 processes
637 Same as top, except sorted by mem usage instead of cpu
641 Total upload, this one too, may overflow
644 updates Number of updates
649 Upload speed in kilobytes
653 Upload speed in kilobytes with one decimal
656 upspeedgraph net, (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour
658 Upload speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #.
665 Uptime in a shorter format
669 Seti@home current progress
672 seti_progbar (height),(width)
673 Seti@home current progress bar
677 Seti@home total user credit
681 Change verticle offset by N pixels. Negative values will cause
682 text to overlap. See also $offset.
686 conky -t '${time %D %H:%m}' -o -u 30
687 Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as text and 30
690 conky -a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d
691 Start Conky to background at coordinates (5, 500).
694 ~/.conkyrc default configuration file
697 Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't work with
698 all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome and it has
699 been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either. Nautilus can be
700 disabled from drawing to desktop with program gconf-editor. Uncheck
701 show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/. There is -w switch in
702 Conky to set some specific window id. You might find xwininfo -tree
703 useful to find the window to draw to. You can also use -o argument
704 which makes Conky to create its own window.
707 http://conky.sourceforge.net [http://conky.sourceforge.net]
709 http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky [http://www.source-
710 forge.net/projects/conky]
712 #conky on irc.freenode.net
715 The Conky dev team. What's up now??!
719 Conky 2005-08-18 conky(1)