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
44 make install # Optional
48 Conky doesn't probably compile with other compilers than gcc and icc.
49 It doesn't compile with C89 compiler and not even with pure C99. It
50 uses few things that might not exist: strdup(), strcasecmp(), strn-
51 casecmp(), optarg variable with getopt() and long long (not in C89).
52 Crashes in file system statistics stuff when compiled with icc, I don't
55 You can disable 'drawing to own window' feature in case you don't need
56 it by passing --disable-own-window to configure -script.
60 Conky is generally very good on resources. However, certain objects in
61 Conky are harder on resources then others. In particular, the $tail,
62 $top, $font, and $graph objects are quite costly in comparison to the
65 If you do use them, please do not complain about memory or CPU usage,
66 unless you think something is going seriously wrong (mem leak, et
70 Command line options override configurations defined in configuration
73 -V Prints version and exits
77 Text alignment on screen, {top,bottom}_{left,right} or none
80 -b Use double buffering (eliminates "flicker")
84 Config file to load instead of $HOME/.conkyrc
87 -d Daemonize Conky, aka fork to background
94 -h Prints command line help and exits
97 -o Create own window to draw
101 Text to render, remember single quotes, like -t ' $uptime '
120 CONFIGURATION SETTINGS
121 Default configuration file is $HOME/.conkyrc (can be changed from
122 conky.c among other things). See conkyrc.sample. You might want to copy
123 it to $HOME/.conkyrc and then start modifying it.
126 Aligned position on screen, may be top_left, top_right, bot-
127 tom_left, bottom_right, or none
131 Boolean value, if true, Conky will be forked to background when
136 Set conky on the bottom of all other applications
140 Border margin in pixels
144 Border width in pixels
148 The number of samples to average for CPU monitoring
152 Default color and border color
156 Default shading color and border's shading color
159 default_outline_color
160 Default outline color
164 Use the Xdbe extension? (eliminates flicker) It is highly recom-
165 mended to use own window with this one so double buffer won't be
170 Draw borders around text?
181 font Font name in X, xfontsel can be used to get a nice font
184 gap_x Gap between right or left border of screen, same as passing -x
188 gap_y Gap between top or bottom border of screen, same as passing -y
193 Substract (file system) buffers from used memory?
197 Mail spool for mail checking
201 Minimum size of window
205 Hostname for mldonkey stuff, defaults to localhost
209 Mldonkey port, 4001 default
213 Mldonkey login, default none
217 Mldonkey password, default none
233 The number of samples to average for net data
237 Force UTF8? requires XFT
241 Boolean, create own window to draw?
245 Pad percentages to this many decimals (0 = no padding)
249 Border stippling (dashing) in pixels
253 Total number of times for Conky to update before quitting. Zero
254 makes Conky run forever
258 Update interval in seconds
262 Boolean value, if true, text is rendered in upper case
266 Adds spaces after certain objects to stop them from moving other
267 things around. Note that this only helps if you are using a mono
268 font, such as Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
272 Use Xft (anti-aliased font and stuff)
275 text After this begins text to be formatted on screen
279 Colors are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of them:
280 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Also, http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html
281 [http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html] Color can be also in #rrggbb format
282 (hex). Note that when displaying bytes, power is 1024 and not 1000 so
283 1M really means 1024*1024 bytes and not 1000*1000.
286 IP address for an interface
290 ACPI ac adapter state.
298 ACPI temperature in C.
302 ACPI temperature in F.
306 CPU temperature from therm_adt746x
310 Fan speed from therm_adt746x
314 Right-justify text, with space of N
322 Remaining capacity in ACPI or APM battery. ACPI battery number
323 can be given as argument (default is BAT0).
327 Amount of memory buffered
330 cached Amount of memory cached
334 Change drawing color to color
337 cpu CPU usage in percents
340 cpubar (height),(width)
341 Bar that shows CPU usage, height is bar's height in pixels
344 cpugraph (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour 2)
345 CPU usage graph, with optional colours in hex, minus the #.
349 Download speed in kilobytes
353 Download speed in kilobytes with one decimal
356 downspeedgraph net, (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
358 Download speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #.
361 else Text to show if any of the above are not true
365 Executes a shell command and displays the output in conky. warn-
366 ing: this takes a lot more resources than other variables. I'd
367 recommend coding wanted behaviour in C and posting a patch.
370 execbar shell command
371 Same as exec, except if the first value return is a value
372 between 0-100, it will use that number for a bar. The size for
373 the bar is currently fixed, but that may change in the future.
376 execgraph shell command
377 Same as execbar, but graphs values
380 execi interval, shell command
381 Same as exec but with specific interval. Interval can't be less
382 than update_interval in configuration.
386 Specify a different font. Only applies to one line.
389 freq Returns CPU frequency in MHz
392 freq_g Returns CPU frequency in GHz
395 fs_bar (height),(width) fs
396 Bar that shows how much space is used on a file system. height
397 is the height in pixels. fs is any file on that file system.
401 Free space on a file system available for users.
405 Free percentage of space on a file system available for users.
413 File system used space
417 Horizontal line, height is the height in pixels
421 I2C sensor from sysfs (Linux 2.6). dev may be omitted if you
422 have only one I2C device. type is either in (or vol) meaning
423 voltage, fan meaning fan or temp/tempf (first in C, second in F)
424 meaning temperature. n is number of the sensor. See
425 /sys/bus/i2c/devices/ on your local computer.
429 if PROCESS is running, display everything if_running and the
434 if FILE exists, display everything between if_existing and the
438 if_mounted (mountpoint)
439 if MOUNTPOINT is mounted, display everything between if_mounted
440 and the matching $endif
443 kernel Kernel version
446 linkstatus (interface)
447 Get the link status for wireless connections
451 (1,2,3)> System load average, 1 is for past 1 minute, 2 for past
452 5 minutes and 3 for past 15 minutes.
456 Machine, i686 for example
459 mails Mail count in mail spool. You can use program like fetchmail to
460 get mails from some server using your favourite protocol. See
464 mem Amount of memory in use
467 membar (height),(width)
468 Bar that shows amount of memory in use
471 memmax Total amount of memory
475 Percentage of memory in use
479 total session upload in mb
483 total session download in mb
487 number of shared files
491 total session shared in mb, buggy in some mldonkey versions
495 tcp upload rate in kb/s
499 tcp download rate in kb/s
503 udp upload rate in kb/s
507 udp download rate in kb/s
511 number of completed files
514 ml_ndownloading_files
515 number of downloading files
519 Artist in current MPD song must be enabled at compile
523 Album in current MPD song
526 mpd_bar (height),(width)
527 Bar of mpd's progress
531 Bitrate of current song
535 Playing, stopped, et cetera.
539 Title of current MPD song
555 Percent of song's progress
559 Unread mail count in mail spool.
570 pre_exec shell command
571 Executes a shell command one time before conky displays anything
572 and puts output as text.
576 Total processes (sleeping and running)
580 Running processes (not sleeping), requires Linux 2.6
588 Stippled (dashed) horizontal line
591 swapbar (height),(width)
592 Bar that shows amount of swap in use
595 swap Amount of swap in use
603 Percentage of swap in use
607 System name, Linux for example
611 Move text over by N pixels. See also $voffset.
614 tail logfile, lines interval> Displays last N lines of supplied text
615 text file. If interval is not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's
616 interval. Max of 30 lines. Max of 30 lines can be displayed.
620 Local time, see man strftime to get more information about for-
625 Total download, overflows at 4 GB on Linux with 32-bit arch and
626 there doesn't seem to be a way to know how many times it has
627 already done that before conky has started.
631 This takes arguments in the form:top (name) (number) Basically,
632 processes are ranked from highest to lowest in terms of cpu
633 usage, which is what (num) represents. The types are: "name",
634 "pid", "cpu", and mem". There can be a max of 10 processes
639 Same as top, except sorted by mem usage instead of cpu
643 Total upload, this one too, may overflow
646 updates Number of updates
651 Upload speed in kilobytes
655 Upload speed in kilobytes with one decimal
658 upspeedgraph net, (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour
660 Upload speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #.
667 Uptime in a shorter format
671 Seti@home current progress
674 seti_progbar (height),(width)
675 Seti@home current progress bar
679 Seti@home total user credit
683 Change verticle offset by N pixels. Negative values will cause
684 text to overlap. See also $offset.
688 conky -t '${time %D %H:%m}' -o -u 30
689 Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as text and 30
692 conky -a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d
693 Start Conky to background at coordinates (5, 500).
696 ~/.conkyrc default configuration file
699 Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't work with
700 all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome and it has
701 been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either. Nautilus can be
702 disabled from drawing to desktop with program gconf-editor. Uncheck
703 show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/. There is -w switch in
704 Conky to set some specific window id. You might find xwininfo -tree
705 useful to find the window to draw to. You can also use -o argument
706 which makes Conky to create its own window.
709 http://conky.sourceforge.net [http://conky.sourceforge.net]
711 http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky [http://www.source-
712 forge.net/projects/conky]
714 #conky on irc.freenode.net
717 The Conky dev team. What's up now??!