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-own-window --enable-proc-uptime
47 --enable-audacious --enable-bmpx --enable-hddtemp --enable-mpd --en-
48 able-xmms2 --enable-imlib2 --enable-portmon --enable-debug --en-
49 able-double-buffer --enable-xdamage --enable-x11
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 Border margin in pixels
160 Border width in pixels
164 The number of samples to average for CPU monitoring
168 Default color and border color
171 default_outline_color
172 Default outline color
176 Default shading color and border's shading color
180 Use the Xdbe extension? (eliminates flicker) It is highly recom-
181 mended to use own window with this one so double buffer won't be
186 Draw borders around text?
190 Draw borders around graphs?
201 font Font name in X, xfontsel can be used to get a nice font
204 gap_x Gap, in pixels, between right or left border of screen, same as
205 passing -x at command line, e.g. gap_x 10
208 gap_y Gap, in pixels, between top or bottom border of screen, same as
209 passing -y at command line, e.g. gap_y 10.
212 imap Default global IMAP server. Arguments are: "host user pass [-i
213 interval] [-f folder] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is
214 143, default folder is 'INBOX', default interval is 5 minutes.
215 If the password is supplied as '*', you will be prompted to en-
216 ter the password when Conky starts.
220 Mail spool for mail checking
223 max_port_monitor_connections
224 Allow each port monitor to track at most this many connections
225 (if 0 or not set, default is 256)
229 Maximum number of special things, e.g. fonts, offsets, aligns,
230 etc. (default is 512)
234 Maximum size of user text buffer, i.e. layout below TEXT line in
235 config file (default is 16384 bytes)
239 Maximum width of window
242 minimum_size width (height)
243 Minimum size of window
259 The number of samples to average for net data
263 Substract (file system) buffers from used memory?
267 Force UTF8? requires XFT
271 Boolean, create own window to draw?
274 own_window_transparent
275 Boolean, set pseudo-transparency?
279 if own_window is yes, you may specify type normal, desktop or
280 override (default: normal). Desktop windows are special windows
281 that have no window decorations; are always visible on your
282 desktop; do not appear in your pager or taskbar; and are sticky
283 across all workspaces. Override windows are not under the con-
284 trol of the window manager. Hints are ignored. This type of win-
285 dow can be useful for certain situations.
288 own_window_colour colour
289 If own_window_transparent no, set a specified background colour
290 (defaults to black). Takes either a hex value (#ffffff) or a
291 valid RGB name (see /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt)
294 own_window_hints undecorated,below,above,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
295 If own_window is yes, you may use these window manager hints to
296 affect the way Conky displays. Notes: Use own_window_type desk-
297 top as another way to implement many of these hints implicitly.
298 If you use own_window_type override, window manager hints have
299 no meaning and are ignored.
303 Print text to stdout.
307 Pad percentages to this many decimals (0 = no padding)
310 pop3 Default global POP3 server. Arguments are: "host user pass [-i
311 interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, default
312 interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*', you
313 will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
317 Border stippling (dashing) in pixels
321 Total number of times for Conky to update before quitting. Zero
322 makes Conky run forever
326 Update interval in seconds
330 Boolean value, if true, text is rendered in upper case
334 Adds spaces after certain objects to stop them from moving other
335 things around. Note that this only helps if you are using a mono
336 font, such as Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
340 Use Xft (anti-aliased font and stuff)
344 Manually set the WM_CLASS name. Defaults to "conky".
348 Alpha of Xft font. Must be a value at or between 1 and 0.
355 TEXT After this begins text to be formatted on screen
359 Colors are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of them:
360 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Also, <http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html>.
361 Color can be also in #rrggbb format (hex). Note that when displaying
362 bytes, power is 1024 and not 1000 so 1M really means 1024*1024 bytes
366 IP address for an interface
370 ACPI ac adapter state.
378 ACPI temperature in C.
382 ACPI temperature in F.
386 CPU temperature from therm_adt746x
390 Fan speed from therm_adt746x
394 Right-justify text, with space of N
402 Display APM AC adapter status (FreeBSD only)
406 Display APM battery life in percent (FreeBSD only)
410 Display remaining APM battery life in hh:mm:ss or "unknown" if
411 AC adapterstatus is on-line or charging (FreeBSD only)
414 audacious_bar (height),(width)
419 Bitrate of current tune
423 Number of audio channels of current tune
427 Full path and filename of current tune
431 Sampling frequency of current tune
435 Total length of current tune as MM:SS
438 audacious_length_seconds
439 Total length of current tune in seconds
442 audacious_playlist_position
443 Playlist position of current tune
446 audacious_playlist_length
447 Number of tunes in playlist
451 Position of current tune (MM:SS)
454 audacious_position_seconds
455 Position of current tune in seconds
459 Player status (Playing/Paused/Stopped/Not running)
462 audacious_title (max length)
463 Title of current tune with optional maximum length specifier
467 Battery status and remaining percentage capacity of ACPI or APM
468 battery. ACPI battery number can be given as argument (default
473 Battery charge/discharge time remaining of ACPI battery. ACPI
474 battery number can be given as argument (default is BAT0).
478 Artist in current BMPx track
482 Album in current BMPx track
486 Title of the current BMPx track
490 Track number of the current BMPx track
494 Bitrate of the current BMPx track
498 URI of the current BMPx track
502 Amount of memory buffered
505 cached Amount of memory cached
509 Change drawing color to color
513 CPU usage in percents. For SMP machines, the CPU number can be
514 provided as an argument. ${cpu 0} is the total usage, and ${cpu
515 X} (X >= 1) are individual CPUs.
518 cpubar (cpu number) (height),(width)
519 Bar that shows CPU usage, height is bar's height in pixels. See
520 $cpu for more info on SMP.
523 cpugraph (cpu number) (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
525 CPU usage graph, with optional colours in hex, minus the #. See
526 $cpu for more info on SMP.
529 diskio Displays current disk IO.
532 diskiograph (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour 2)
534 Disk IO graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If scale is
535 non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
539 Download speed in kilobytes
543 Download speed in kilobytes with one decimal
546 downspeedgraph net (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient
548 Download speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If
549 scale is non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
552 else Text to show if any of the above are not true
556 Current entropy available for crypto freaks
559 entropy_bar (height),(width)
560 Normalized bar of available entropy for crypto freaks
564 Total size of system entropy pool for crypto freaks
568 Executes a shell command and displays the output in conky. warn-
569 ing: this takes a lot more resources than other variables. I'd
570 recommend coding wanted behaviour in C and posting a patch.
574 Same as exec, except if the first value return is a value be-
575 tween 0-100, it will use that number for a bar. The size for the
576 bar is currently fixed, but that may change in the future.
580 Same as execbar, but graphs values.
583 execi interval command
584 Same as exec but with specific interval. Interval can't be less
585 than update_interval in configuration. See also $texeci
588 execibar interval command
589 Same as execbar, except with an interval
592 execigraph interval command
593 Same as execigraph, but takes an interval arg graphs values
597 Specify a different font. This new font will apply to the cur-
598 rent line and everything following. You can use a $font with no
599 arguments to change back to the default font (much like with
604 Returns CPU #n's frequency in MHz. CPUs are counted from 1. If
605 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
609 Returns CPU #n's frequency in GHz. CPUs are counted from 1. If
610 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
614 Returns CPU frequency in MHz, but is calculated by counting to
615 clock cycles to complete an instruction. Only available for
620 Returns CPU frequency in GHz, but is calculated by counting to
621 clock cycles to complete an instruction. Only available for
625 fs_bar (height),(width) fs
626 Bar that shows how much space is used on a file system. height
627 is the height in pixels. fs is any file on that file system.
631 Free space on a file system available for users.
635 Free percentage of space on a file system available for users.
643 File system used space
646 goto x The next element will be printed at position 'x'.
649 hddtemp dev, (host,(port))
650 Displays temperature of a selected hard disk drive as reported
651 by the hddtemp daemon running on host:port. Default host is
652 127.0.0.1, default port is 7634.
655 head logfile lines (interval)
656 Displays first N lines of supplied text text file. If interval
657 is not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's interval. Max of 30
658 lines can be displayed, or until the text buffer is filled.
662 Horizontal line, height is the height in pixels
665 iconv_start codeset_from codeset_to
666 Convert text from one codeset to another using GNU iconv. Needs
667 to be stopped with iconv_stop.
671 Stop iconv codeset conversion.
675 I2C sensor from sysfs (Linux 2.6). dev may be omitted if you
676 have only one I2C device. type is either in (or vol) meaning
677 voltage, fan meaning fan or temp/tempf (first in C, second in F)
678 meaning temperature. n is number of the sensor. See
679 /sys/bus/i2c/devices/ on your local computer.
683 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
684 whether ac power is on, as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to
685 human-readable). Beware that this is by default not enabled by
690 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
691 the bios version as listed in /proc/i8k.
695 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
696 the volume buttons status as listed in /proc/i8k.
700 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
701 the cpu temperature in Celsius, as reported by /proc/i8k.
705 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
706 the cpu temperature in Fahrenheit, as reported by /proc/i8k.
710 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
711 the left fan's rate of rotation, in revolutions per minute as
712 listed in /proc/i8k. Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans
717 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
718 the left fan status as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to human-
719 readable). Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans in re-
724 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
725 the right fan's rate of rotation, in revolutions per minute as
726 listed in /proc/i8k. Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans
731 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
732 the right fan status as listed in /proc/i8k (translated to hu-
733 man-readable). Beware, some laptops i8k reports these fans in
738 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
739 your laptop serial number as listed in /proc/i8k.
743 If running the i8k kernel driver for Inspiron laptops, displays
744 the version formatting of /proc/i8k.
748 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the fan speed.
752 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the temperatures from the IBM
753 temperature sensors (N=0..7) Sensor 0 is on the CPU, 3 is on the
758 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the "master" volume, con-
759 trolled by the volume keys (0-14).
763 If running the IBM ACPI, displays the brigtness of the laptops's
768 if PROCESS is running, display everything if_running and the
773 if FILE exists, display everything between if_existing and the
777 if_mounted (mountpoint)
778 if MOUNTPOINT is mounted, display everything between if_mounted
779 and the matching $endif
783 Displays the number of messages in your global IMAP inbox by de-
784 fault. You can define individual IMAP inboxes seperately by
785 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
786 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 143, de-
787 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
788 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
792 Displays the number of unseen messages in your global IMAP inbox
793 by default. You can define individual IMAP inboxes seperately by
794 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
795 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 143, de-
796 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
797 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
800 kernel Kernel version
804 Get the link status for wireless connections
808 (1,2,3)> System load average, 1 is for past 1 minute, 2 for past
809 5 minutes and 3 for past 15 minutes.
813 Machine, i686 for example
816 mails Mail count in mail spool. You can use program like fetchmail to
817 get mails from some server using your favourite protocol. See
821 mem Amount of memory in use
824 membar (height),(width)
825 Bar that shows amount of memory in use
828 memmax Total amount of memory
832 Percentage of memory in use
836 Artist in current MPD song must be enabled at compile
840 Album in current MPD song
843 mpd_bar (height),(width)
844 Bar of mpd's progress
848 Bitrate of current song
852 Playing, stopped, et cetera.
856 Title of current MPD song
872 Percent of song's progress
876 Random status (On/Off)
880 Repeat status (On/Off)
884 Prints the MPD track field
888 Prints the MPD name field
892 Prints the file name of the current MPD song
896 Prints the song name in either the form "artist - title" or file
897 name, depending on whats available
901 Unread mail count in mail spool.
913 If running on Apple powerbook/ibook, display information on bat-
914 tery status. The item parameter specifies, what information to
915 display. Exactly one item must be specified. Valid items are:
917 status: Display if battery is fully charged, charging, discharg-
918 ing or absent (running on AC)
919 percent: Display charge of battery in percent, if charging or
920 discharging. Nothing will be displayed, if battery is fully
922 time: Display the time remaining until the battery will be fully
923 charged or discharged at current rate. Nothing is displayed, if
924 battery is absent or if it's present but fully charged and not
929 Displays the number of unseen messages in your global POP3 inbox
930 by default. You can define individual POP3 inboxes seperately by
931 passing arguments to this object. Arguments are: "host user pass
932 [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default port is 110, de-
933 fault interval is 5 minutes. If the password is supplied as '*',
934 you will be prompted to enter the password when Conky starts.
938 Displays the amount of space (in MiB, 2^20) used in your global
939 POP3 inbox by default. You can define individual POP3 inboxes
940 seperately by passing arguments to this object. Arguments are:
941 "host user pass [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]". Default
942 port is 110, default interval is 5 minutes. If the password is
943 supplied as '*', you will be prompted to enter the password when
947 pre_exec shell command
948 Executes a shell command one time before conky displays anything
949 and puts output as text.
953 Total processes (sleeping and running)
957 Running processes (not sleeping), requires Linux 2.6
965 Stippled (dashed) horizontal line
968 swapbar (height),(width)
969 Bar that shows amount of swap in use
972 swap Amount of swap in use
980 Percentage of swap in use
984 System name, Linux for example
987 tcp_portmon port_begin port_end item (index) (ip4 only at present)
988 TCP port monitor for specified local ports. Port numbers must be
989 in the range 1 to 65535. Valid items are:
991 count - total number of connections in the range
992 rip - remote ip address
993 rhost - remote host name
994 rport - remote port number
995 rservice - remote service name from /etc/services
996 lip - local ip address
997 lhost - local host name
998 lport - local port number
999 lservice - local service name from /etc/services
1001 The connection index provides you with access to each connection
1002 in the port monitor. The monitor will return information for in-
1003 dex values from 0 to n-1 connections. Values higher than n-1 are
1004 simply ignored. For the "count" item, the connection index must
1005 be omitted. It is required for all other items.
1008 ${tcp_portmon 6881 6999 count} - displays the number of connec-
1009 tions in the bittorrent port range
1010 ${tcp_portmon 22 22 rip 0} - displays the remote host ip of the
1011 first sshd connection
1012 ${tcp_portmon 22 22 rip 9} - displays the remote host ip of the
1013 tenth sshd connection
1014 ${tcp_portmon 1 1024 rhost 0} - displays the remote host name of
1015 the first connection on a privileged port
1016 ${tcp_portmon 1 1024 rport 4} - displays the remote host port of
1017 the fifth connection on a privileged port
1018 ${tcp_portmon 1 65535 lservice 14} - displays the local service
1019 name of the fifteenth connection in the range of all ports
1021 Note that port monitor variables which share the same port range
1022 actually refer to the same monitor, so many references to a sin-
1023 gle port range for different items and different indexes all use
1024 the same monitor internally. In other words, the program avoids
1025 creating redundant monitors.
1027 texeci interval command
1028 Runs a command at an interval inside a thread and displays the
1029 output. Same as $execi, except the command is run inside a
1030 thread. Use this if you have a slow script to keep Conky updat-
1031 ing. You should make the interval slightly longer then the time
1032 it takes your script to execute. For example, if you have a
1033 script that take 5 seconds to execute, you should make the in-
1034 terval at least 6 seconds. See also $execi.
1038 Move text over by N pixels. See also $voffset.
1041 tab (width, (start))
1042 Puts a tab of the specified width, starting from column 'start'.
1045 tail logfile lines (interval)
1046 Displays last N lines of supplied text text file. If interval is
1047 not supplied, Conky assumes 2x Conky's interval. Max of 30 lines
1048 can be displayed, or until the text buffer is filled.
1052 Local time, see man strftime to get more information about for-
1057 Display time in UTC (universal coordinate time).
1060 tztime (timezone) (format)
1061 Local time for specified timezone, see man strftime to get more
1062 information about format. The timezone argument is specified in
1063 similar fashion as TZ environment variable. For hints, look in
1064 /usr/share/zoneinfo. e.g. US/Pacific, Europe/Zurich, etc.
1068 Total download, overflows at 4 GB on Linux with 32-bit arch and
1069 there doesn't seem to be a way to know how many times it has al-
1070 ready done that before conky has started.
1074 This takes arguments in the form:top (name) (number) Basically,
1075 processes are ranked from highest to lowest in terms of cpu us-
1076 age, which is what (num) represents. The types are: "name",
1077 "pid", "cpu", and "mem". There can be a max of 10 processes
1082 Same as top, except sorted by mem usage instead of cpu
1086 Total upload, this one too, may overflow
1089 updates Number of updates
1094 Upload speed in kilobytes
1098 Upload speed in kilobytes with one decimal
1101 upspeedgraph net (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour
1103 Upload speed graph, colours defined in hex, minus the #. If
1104 scale is non-zero, it becomes the scale for the graph.
1111 Uptime in a shorter format
1115 Change vertical offset by N pixels. Negative values will cause
1116 text to overlap. See also $offset.
1120 Returns CPU #n's voltage in mV. CPUs are counted from 1. If
1121 omitted, the parameter defaults to 1.
1125 Returns CPU #n's voltage in V. CPUs are counted from 1. If omit-
1126 ted, the parameter defaults to 1.
1130 conky -t '${time %D %H:%m}' -o -u 30
1131 Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as text and 30
1132 sec update interval.
1134 conky -a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d
1135 Start Conky to background at coordinates (5, 500).
1138 ~/.conkyrc default configuration file
1141 Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't work with
1142 all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome and it has
1143 been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either. Nautilus can be
1144 disabled from drawing to desktop with program gconf-editor. Uncheck
1145 show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/. There is -w switch in
1146 Conky to set some specific window id. You might find xwininfo -tree
1147 useful to find the window to draw to. You can also use -o argument
1148 which makes Conky to create its own window.
1151 <http://conky.sourceforge.net>
1153 <http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky>
1155 #conky on irc.freenode.net
1158 The Conky dev team. What's up now!