Glances – Real Time System Monitoring Tool for Linux

Glances is a cross-platform curses-based command line monitoring tool writen in Python which use the psutil library to grab informations from the system. Glance monitoring CPU, Load Average, Memory, Network Interfaces, Disk I/O, Processesand File System spaces utilization.

Glances can adapt dynamically the displayed information depending on the terminal siwrize. It can also work in a client/server mode for remote monitoring.

Glances Features

• CPU Informations (user related applications, system core programs and idle programs.
• Total memory Information including RAM, Swap, Free memory etc.
• The average CPU load for the past 1min, 5mins and 15 mins.
• Network Download/Upload rates of network connections.
• Total number of processes, active ones, sleeping processes etc.
• Disk I/O related (read or write) speed details
• Currently mounted devices disk usages.
• Top processes with their CPU/Memory usages, Names and location of application.
• Shows the current date and time at bottom.
• Highlights processes in Red that consumes highest system resources.

Requirements

• python >= 2.6 (tested with version 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3)
• psutil >= 0.4.1 (recommended version >= 0.6)
• jinja (optional for HTML output)
• pysensors (optional for HW monitoring support) [Linux-only]
• hddtemp (optional for HDD temperature monitoring support)
• batinfo (optional for battery monitoring support) [Linux-only]
• setuptools

Install Glances

Actually, packages exist for Arch Linux, Fedora / CentOS / RHEL, Debian (Sid/Testing) and Ubuntu (13.04+), so you should be able to install it using your favorite package manager.
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In Ubuntu:

#sudo apt-get install glances -y

In Centos:

# yum install glances -y

Usage

Standalone mode
Simply run:

$ glances

Client/Server mode
If you want to remotely monitor a machine, called server, from another one, called client, just run on the server:
server$ glances -s
and on the client:

client$ glances -c @server

where @server is the IP address or hostname of the server.
In server mode, you can set the bind address -B ADDRESS and listening TCP port -p PORT.
In client mode, you can set the TCP port of the server -p PORT.
Default binding address is 0.0.0.0 (Glances will listen on all the network interfaces) and TCP port is 61209.
In client/server mode, limits are set by the server side.
You can also set a password to access to the server -P password.
Glances is IPv6 compatible. Just use the -B :: option to bind to all IPv6 addresses.

Glances Color Codes

Meaning of Glances color code:

1. GREEN: OK (everything is fine)
2. BLUE: CAREFUL (need attention)
3. VIOLET: WARNING (alert)
4. RED: CRITICAL (critical)

We can set thresholds in configuration file. By default thresholds set is (careful=50,warning=70 and critical=90), we can customized as per our needs. The default configuration file is located at ‘/etc/glances/glances.conf’.
More information on glances website