6 conky - A system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo code, but
7 more kickass. It just keeps on given'er. Yeah.
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 de-
21 veloper 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 For users compiling from source, make sure you have the X development
28 libraries installed. This should be a package along the lines of
29 "libx11-dev or xorg-x11-dev".
31 Gentoo users -- Conky is in Gentoo's Portage... simply use "emerge app-
32 admin/conky" for installation. There is also usually an up-to-date
33 ebuild within Conky's package or in Svn.
35 Debian,etc. users -- Conky will be in Debian's repositories soon (by
36 mid-September, hopefully), and then Ubuntu shortly thereafter. Until
37 then, "dpkg -i" the .deb package to install.
39 Example to compile and run Conky with all optional components (note
40 that some configure options may differ for your system):
42 sh autogen.sh # Only required if building from Svn
44 ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --in-
45 fodir=/usr/share/info --datadir=/usr/share --sysconfdir=/etc --local-
46 statedir=/var/lib --enable-xft --enable-seti --enable-double-buffer
47 --enable-own-window --enable-proc-uptime --enable-mpd --enable-mldonkey
48 --enable-x11 --enable-portmon --enable-xmms --enable-bmp --enable-auda-
49 cious --enable-infopipe --enable-bmpx
53 make install # Optional
57 Conky probably doesn't compile with compilers other than gcc and icc.
58 It doesn't compile with C89 compiler and not even with pure C99. It
59 uses a few things that might not exist: strdup(), strcasecmp(), strn-
60 casecmp(), optarg variable with getopt() and long long (not in C89).
61 Crashes in file system statistics stuff when compiled with icc, I don't
64 You can disable 'drawing to own window' feature in case you don't need
65 it by passing --disable-own-window to configure -script.
69 Conky is generally very good on resources. However, certain objects in
70 Conky are harder on resources then others. In particular, the $tail,
71 $top, $font, and $graph objects are quite costly in comparison to the
74 If you do use them, please do not complain about memory or CPU usage,
75 unless you think something's seriously wrong (mem leak, etc.).
77 An easy way to force Conky to reload your ~/.conkyrc: "killall -SIGUSR1
78 conky". Saves you the trouble of having to kill and then restart.
80 IMPORTANT: For previous Conky users, Conky 1.3 no longer supports the
81 metar stuff. mdsplib was causing way too many problems. Hopefully
82 there'll be a better solution in Conky 2.x...
85 Command line options override configurations defined in configuration
89 Prints version and exits
93 Text alignment on screen, {top,bottom}_{left,right} or none
96 -b Use double buffering (eliminates "flicker")
100 Config file to load instead of $HOME/.conkyrc
103 -d Daemonize Conky, aka fork to background
110 -h Prints command line help and exits
113 -o Create own window to draw
117 Text to render, remember single quotes, like -t ' $uptime '
136 CONFIGURATION SETTINGS
137 Default configuration file is $HOME/.conkyrc (can be changed from
138 conky.c among other things). See conkyrc.sample. If installing from De-
139 bian package, this should be in /usr/share/doc/conky/examples ("gunzip
140 conkyrc.sample.gz" to get conkyrc.sample).
142 You might want to copy it to $HOME/.conkyrc and then start modifying
143 it. Other configs can be found at http://conky.sf.net
146 Aligned position on screen, may be top_left, top_right, bot-
147 tom_left, bottom_right, or none
151 Boolean value, if true, Conky will be forked to background when
156 Set Conky on the bottom of all other applications
160 Border margin in pixels
164 Border width in pixels
168 The number of samples to average for CPU monitoring
172 Default color and border color
176 Default shading color and border's shading color
179 default_outline_color
180 Default outline color
184 Use the Xdbe extension? (eliminates flicker) It is highly recom-
185 mended to use own window with this one so double buffer won't be
190 Draw borders around text?
194 Draw borders around graphs?
205 font Font name in X, xfontsel can be used to get a nice font
208 gap_x Gap between right or left border of screen, same as passing -x
212 gap_y Gap between top or bottom border of screen, same as passing -y
216 imap Default global IMAP server. Arguments are: "host user pass [-i
217 interval] [-f folder] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is
218 143, default folder is 'INBOX', default interval is 5 minutes.
219 If the password is supplied as '*', you will be prompted to en-
220 ter the password when Conky starts.
224 Substract (file system) buffers from used memory?
228 Mail spool for mail checking
232 Maximum width of window
235 minimum_size width (height)
236 Minimum size of window
240 Allow for the creation of at least this number of port monitors
241 (if 0 or not set, default is 16)
244 min_port_monitor_connections
245 Allow each port monitor to track at least this many connections
246 (if 0 or not set, default is 256)
250 Hostname for mldonkey stuff, defaults to localhost
254 Mldonkey port, 4001 default
258 Mldonkey login, default none
262 Mldonkey password, default none
278 The number of samples to average for net data
282 Force UTF8? requires XFT
286 Boolean, create own window to draw?
289 own_window_transparent
290 Boolean, set pseudo-transparency?
294 if own_window is yes, you may specify type normal, desktop or
295 override (default: normal). Desktop windows are special windows
296 that have no window decorations; are always visible on your
297 desktop; do not appear in your pager or taskbar; and are sticky
298 across all workspaces. Override windows are not under the con-
299 trol of the window manager. Hints are ignored. This type of win-
300 dow can be useful for certain situations.
303 own_window_colour colour
304 If own_window_transparent no, set a specified background colour
305 (defaults to black). Takes either a hex value (#ffffff) or a
306 valid RGB name (see /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt)
309 own_window_hints undecorated,below,above,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
310 If own_window is yes, you may use these window manager hints to
311 affect the way Conky displays. Notes: Use own_window_type desk-
312 top as another way to implement many of these hints implicitly.
313 If you use own_window_type override, window manager hints have
314 no meaning and are ignored.
318 Print text to stdout.
322 Pad percentages to this many decimals (0 = no padding)
325 pop3 Default global POP3 server. Arguments are: "host user pass [-i
326 interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, default
327 interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*', you
328 will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
332 Border stippling (dashing) in pixels
336 Total number of times for Conky to update before quitting. Zero
337 makes Conky run forever
341 Update interval in seconds
345 Boolean value, if true, text is rendered in upper case
349 Adds spaces after certain objects to stop them from moving other
350 things around. Note that this only helps if you are using a mono
351 font, such as Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
355 Use Xft (anti-aliased font and stuff)
359 Manually set the WM_CLASS name. Defaults to "conky".
363 Alpha of Xft font. Must be a value at or between 1 and 0.
371 Use specified player/plugin for the xmms status variables. Valid
372 items are: none, xmms, bmp, audacious and infopipe. (default is
373 none). Note that bmpx is currently handled separately.
376 TEXT After this begins text to be formatted on screen
380 Colors are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of them:
381 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Also, <http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html>.
382 Color can be also in #rrggbb format (hex). Note that when displaying
383 bytes, power is 1024 and not 1000 so 1M really means 1024*1024 bytes
387 IP address for an interface
391 ACPI ac adapter state.
399 ACPI temperature in C.
403 ACPI temperature in F.
407 CPU temperature from therm_adt746x
411 Fan speed from therm_adt746x
415 Right-justify text, with space of N
423 Display APM AC adapter status (FreeBSD only)
427 Display APM battery life in percent (FreeBSD only)
431 Display remaining APM battery life in hh:mm:ss or "unknown" if
432 AC adapterstatus is on-line or charging (FreeBSD only)
436 Remaining capacity in ACPI or APM battery. ACPI battery number
437 can be given as argument (default is BAT0).
441 Artist in current BMPx track
445 Album in current BMPx track
449 Title of the current BMPx track
453 Track number of the current BMPx track
457 Bitrate of the current BMPx track
461 URI of the current BMPx track
465 Amount of memory buffered
468 cached Amount of memory cached
472 Change drawing color to color
476 CPU usage in percents. For SMP machines, the CPU number can be
477 provided as an argument. cpu0 is the total usage, and >=cpu1 are
481 cpubar (cpu number) (height),(width)
482 Bar that shows CPU usage, height is bar's height in pixels. See
483 $cpu for more info on SMP.
486 cpugraph (cpu number) (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
488 CPU usage graph, with optional colours in hex, minus the #. See
489 $cpu for more info on SMP.
492 diskio Displays current disk IO.
495 diskiograph (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour 2)
497 Disk IO graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If scale is
498 non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
502 Download speed in kilobytes
506 Download speed in kilobytes with one decimal
509 downspeedgraph net (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
511 Download speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If
512 scale is non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
515 else Text to show if any of the above are not true
519 Executes a shell command and displays the output in conky. warn-
520 ing: this takes a lot more resources than other variables. I'd
521 recommend coding wanted behaviour in C and posting a patch.
525 Same as exec, except if the first value return is a value be-
526 tween 0-100, it will use that number for a bar. The size for the
527 bar is currently fixed, but that may change in the future.
531 Same as execbar, but graphs values.
534 execi interval command
535 Same as exec but with specific interval. Interval can't be less
536 than update_interval in configuration. See also $texeci
539 execibar interval command
540 Same as execbar, except with an interval
543 execigraph interval command
544 Same as execigraph, but takes an interval arg graphs values
548 Specify a different font. This new font will apply to the cur-
549 rent line and everything following. You can use a $font with no
550 arguments to change back to the default font (much like with
555 Returns CPU #n's frequency in MHz. CPUs are counted from 1. If
556 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
560 Returns CPU #n's frequency in GHz. CPUs are counted from 1. If
561 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
565 Returns CPU frequency in MHz, but is calculated by counting to
566 clock cycles to complete an instruction. Only available for
571 Returns CPU frequency in GHz, but is calculated by counting to
572 clock cycles to complete an instruction. Only available for
576 fs_bar (height),(width) fs
577 Bar that shows how much space is used on a file system. height
578 is the height in pixels. fs is any file on that file system.
582 Free space on a file system available for users.
586 Free percentage of space on a file system available for users.
594 File system used space
597 goto x The next element will be printed at position 'x'.
600 hddtemp dev, (host,(port))
601 Displays temperature of a selected hard disk drive as reported
602 by the hddtemp daemon running on host:port. Default host is
603 127.0.0.1, default port is 7634.
606 head logfile lines (interval)
607 Displays first N lines of supplied text text file. If interval
608 is not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's interval. Max of 30
609 lines can be displayed, or until the text buffer is filled.
613 Horizontal line, height is the height in pixels
616 iconv_start codeset_from codeset_to
617 Convert text from one codeset to another using GNU iconv. Needs
618 to be stopped with iconv_stop.
622 Stop iconv codeset conversion.
626 I2C sensor from sysfs (Linux 2.6). dev may be omitted if you
627 have only one I2C device. type is either in (or vol) meaning
628 voltage, fan meaning fan or temp/tempf (first in C, second in F)
629 meaning temperature. n is number of the sensor. See
630 /sys/bus/i2c/devices/ on your local computer.
634 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
635 whether ac power is on, as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to
636 human-readable). Beware that this is by default not enabled by
641 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
642 the bios version as listed in /proc/i8k.
646 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
647 the volume buttons status as listed in /proc/i8k.
651 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
652 the cpu temperature in Celsius, as reported by /proc/i8k.
656 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
657 the cpu temperature in Farenheit, as reported by /proc/i8k.
661 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
662 the left fan's rate of rotation, in revolutions per minute as
663 listed in /proc/i8k. Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans
668 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
669 the left fan status as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to human-
670 readable). Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans in re-
675 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
676 the right fan's rate of rotation, in revolutions per minute as
677 listed in /proc/i8k. Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans
682 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
683 the right fan status as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to hu-
684 man-readable). Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans in
689 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
690 your laptop serial number as listed in /proc/i8k.
694 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
695 the version formatting of /proc/i8k.
699 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the fan speed.
703 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the temperatures from the IBM
704 temperature sensors (N=0..7) Sensor 0 is on the CPU, 3 is on the
709 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the "master" volume, con-
710 trolled by the volume keys (0-14).
714 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the brigtness of the laptops's
719 if PROCESS is running, display everything if_running and the
724 if FILE exists, display everything between if_existing and the
728 if_mounted (mountpoint)
729 if MOUNTPOINT is mounted, display everything between if_mounted
730 and the matching $endif
734 Displays the number of messages in your global IMAP inbox by de-
735 fault. You can define individual IMAP inboxes seperately by
736 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
737 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, de-
738 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
739 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
743 Displays the number of unseen messages in your global IMAP inbox
744 by default. You can define individual IMAP inboxes seperately by
745 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
746 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, de-
747 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
748 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
751 kernel Kernel version
755 Get the link status for wireless connections
759 (1,2,3)> System load average, 1 is for past 1 minute, 2 for past
760 5 minutes and 3 for past 15 minutes.
764 Machine, i686 for example
767 mails Mail count in mail spool. You can use program like fetchmail to
768 get mails from some server using your favourite protocol. See
772 mem Amount of memory in use
775 membar (height),(width)
776 Bar that shows amount of memory in use
779 memmax Total amount of memory
783 Percentage of memory in use
787 Artist in current MPD song must be enabled at compile
791 Album in current MPD song
794 mpd_bar (height),(width)
795 Bar of mpd's progress
799 Bitrate of current song
803 Playing, stopped, et cetera.
807 Title of current MPD song
823 Percent of song's progress
827 Random status (On/Off)
831 Repeat status (On/Off)
835 Prints the MPD track field
839 Prints the MPD name field
843 Prints the file name of the current MPD song
847 Prints the song name in either the form "artist - title" or file
848 name, depending on whats available
852 Unread mail count in mail spool.
864 If running on Apple powerbook/ibook, display information on bat-
865 tery status. The item parameter specifies, what information to
866 display. Exactly one item must be specified. Valid items are:
868 status: Display if battery is fully charged, charging, discharg-
869 ing or absent (running on AC)
870 percent: Display charge of battery in percent, if charging or
871 discharging. Nothing will be displayed, if battery is fully
873 time: Display the time remaining until the battery will be fully
874 charged or discharged at current rate. Nothing is displayed, if
875 battery is absent or if it's present but fully charged and not
880 Displays the number of unseen messages in your global POP3 inbox
881 by default. You can define individual POP3 inboxes seperately by
882 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
883 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, de-
884 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
885 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
889 Displays the amount of space (in MiB, 2^20) used in your global
890 POP3 inbox by default. You can define individual POP3 inboxes
891 seperately by passing arguments to this object. Arguments are:
892 "host user pass [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default
893 port is 110, default interval is 5 minutes. If the password is
894 supplied as '*', you will be prompted to enter the password when
898 pre_exec shell command
899 Executes a shell command one time before conky displays anything
900 and puts output as text.
904 Total processes (sleeping and running)
908 Running processes (not sleeping), requires Linux 2.6
916 Stippled (dashed) horizontal line
919 swapbar (height),(width)
920 Bar that shows amount of swap in use
923 swap Amount of swap in use
931 Percentage of swap in use
935 System name, Linux for example
938 tcp_portmon port_begin port_end item (index) (ip4 only at present)
939 TCP port monitor for specified local ports. Port numbers must be
940 in the range 1 to 65535. Valid items are:
942 count - total number of connections in the range
943 rip - remote ip address
944 rhost - remote host name
945 rport - remote port number
946 rservice - remote service name from /etc/services
947 lip - local ip address
948 lhost - local host name
949 lport - local port number
950 lservice - local service name from /etc/services
952 The connection index provides you with access to each connection
953 in the port monitor. The monitor will return information for in-
954 dex values from 0 to n-1 connections. Values higher than n-1 are
955 simply ignored. For the "count" item, the connection index must
956 be omitted. It is required for all other items.
959 ${tcp_portmon 6881 6999 count} - displays the number of connec-
960 tions in the bittorrent port range
961 ${tcp_portmon 22 22 rip 0} - displays the remote host ip of the
962 first sshd connection
963 ${tcp_portmon 22 22 rip 9} - displays the remote host ip of the
964 tenth sshd connection
965 ${tcp_portmon 1 1024 rhost 0} - displays the remote host name of
966 the first connection on a privileged port
967 ${tcp_portmon 1 1024 rport 4} - displays the remote host port of
968 the fifth connection on a privileged port
969 ${tcp_portmon 1 65535 lservice 14} - displays the local service
970 name of the fifteenth connection in the range of all ports
972 Note that port monitor variables which share the same port range
973 actually refer to the same monitor, so many references to a sin-
974 gle port range for different items and different indexes all use
975 the same monitor internally. In other words, the program avoids
976 creating redundant monitors.
978 texeci interval command
979 Runs a command at an interval inside a thread and displays the
980 output. Same as $execi, except the command is run inside a
981 thread. Use this if you have a slow script to keep Conky updat-
982 ing. You should make the interval slightly longer then the time
983 it takes your script to execute. For example, if you have a
984 script that take 5 seconds to execute, you should make the in-
985 terval at least 6 seconds. See also $execi.
989 Move text over by N pixels. See also $voffset.
993 Puts a tab of the specified width, starting from column 'start'.
996 tail logfile lines (interval)
997 Displays last N lines of supplied text text file. If interval is
998 not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's interval. Max of 30 lines
999 can be displayed, or until the text buffer is filled.
1003 Local time, see man strftime to get more information about for-
1008 Display time in UTC (universal coordinate time).
1011 tztime (timezone) (format)
1012 Local time for specified timezone, see man strftime to get more
1013 information about format. The timezone argument is specified in
1014 similar fashion as TZ environment variable. For hints, look in
1015 /usr/share/zoneinfo. e.g. US/Pacific, Europe/Zurich, etc.
1019 Total download, overflows at 4 GB on Linux with 32-bit arch and
1020 there doesn't seem to be a way to know how many times it has al-
1021 ready done that before conky has started.
1025 This takes arguments in the form:top (name) (number) Basically,
1026 processes are ranked from highest to lowest in terms of cpu us-
1027 age, which is what (num) represents. The types are: "name",
1028 "pid", "cpu", and "mem". There can be a max of 10 processes
1033 Same as top, except sorted by mem usage instead of cpu
1037 Total upload, this one too, may overflow
1040 updates Number of updates
1045 Upload speed in kilobytes
1049 Upload speed in kilobytes with one decimal
1052 upspeedgraph net (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour
1054 Upload speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If
1055 scale is non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
1062 Uptime in a shorter format
1066 Seti@home current progress
1069 seti_progbar (height),(width)
1070 Seti@home current progress bar
1074 Seti@home total user credit
1078 Change vertical offset by N pixels. Negative values will cause
1079 text to overlap. See also $offset.
1083 Returns CPU #n's voltage in mV. CPUs are counted from 1. If
1084 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
1088 Returns CPU #n's voltage in V. CPUs are counted from 1. If omit-
1089 ted, the parameter defaults to 1.
1092 xmms_bar (height),(width)
1093 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: progress bar
1097 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: bitrate of current tune
1101 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: number of audio channels of
1106 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: full path and filename of
1111 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: sampling frequency of current
1116 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: total length of current tune
1121 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: total length of current tune
1125 xmms_playlist_position
1126 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: playlist position of current
1130 xmms_playlist_length
1131 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: number of tunes in playlist
1135 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: MM:SS position of current
1139 xmms_position_seconds
1140 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: position of current tune in
1145 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: player status (Play-
1146 ing/Paused/Stopped/Not running)
1150 xmms / bmp / audacious / infopipe: title of current tune
1154 conky -t '${time %D %H:%m}' -o -u 30
1155 Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as text and 30
1156 sec update interval.
1158 conky -a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d
1159 Start Conky to background at coordinates (5, 500).
1162 ~/.conkyrc default configuration file
1165 Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't work with
1166 all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome and it has
1167 been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either. Nautilus can be
1168 disabled from drawing to desktop with program gconf-editor. Uncheck
1169 show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/. There is -w switch in
1170 Conky to set some specific window id. You might find xwininfo -tree
1171 useful to find the window to draw to. You can also use -o argument
1172 which makes Conky to create its own window.
1175 <http://conky.sourceforge.net>
1177 <http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky>
1179 #conky on irc.freenode.net
1182 The Conky dev team. What's up now!