customize conky

June 21st, 2007 mysurface Posted in conky, X11 | Hits: 88271 | 4 Comments »

conky is a light-weight system monitor, which it draws the system information with text, lines and dots. conky allows customization, in fact it is a drawing block that prepare for you to configure. Put all your settings into ~/.conkyrc. You can always get some sample conkyrc at Conky Official Website.

Conky configuration is actually separate into two parts, one is general settings which covers the position, what fonts to use, font size, padding, background etc. Another one is what system info you want to display. It will display exactly what you have defined.

Lets look at some example configurations:


# maintain spacing between certain elements
use_spacer yes

# set to yes if you want tormo to be forked in the background
background no

# Xft font when Xft is enabled
use_xft yes
# Draw shades?
draw_shades yes

# Draw outlines?
draw_outline no # amplifies text

# Draw borders around text
draw_borders no

# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
alignment top_left
#alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right

The lines above are those appearance setting, and what to display will be write under the TEXT. For examples,


TEXT
${color #FF0000}$nodename - $sysname $kernel
${color #0000FF}Uptime: $uptime
RAM: $memperc% ${membar 8}
Swap:$swapperc% ${swapbar 8}
CPU: $cpu% ${cpubar 8}
CPU Temp: ${acpitemp}C
${color #FFFF00}/       ${fs_used /}/${fs_size /}${alignr}${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar 8 /}
/home   ${fs_used /home}/${fs_size /home}${alignr}${fs_used_perc /home}%
${fs_bar 8 /home}
${color #00FF00}Down: ${downspeedf eth0}k/s ${alignr}${totaldown eth0} total
${downspeedgraph eth0}
${color #00FF00}Up: ${upspeedf eth0}k/s ${alignr}${totalup eth0} total
${upspeedgraph eth0}

You can define the text color by ${color #hex}. %color will reset to default color. conky have a lots of variable such as $nodename, $uptime etc where it will display various system info. Some of them takes in parameters such as ${downspeedf eth0}, ${totaldown eth0} etc, therefore you need to put the param with the variable within { and }.

I have created a conkrc which display a thin line appears on top just bellow of my fluxbox toolbar. Don’t confused with the left bottom tool, that is another system monitor tool call gkrellm.

thin conky

Download thin top conkyrc.

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4 Responses to “customize conky”

  1. toydi Says:
    June 22nd, 2007 at 12:24 am

    for GNOME users, if conky keeps flickering or flashing, try this:

    1. Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf, find Section "Module" and add this:
    Load "dbe"

    2. Finally you may want to add these to your ~/.conkyrc :
    double_buffer yes
    own_window yes
    own_window_type normal
    own_window_hints below,sticky,undecorated,skip_taskbar

  2. Brohan Says:
    June 22nd, 2007 at 3:03 am

    Hi,

    I’ve done a bit of conky hacking myself to get a gmail notifier and bloglines notifier working. It’s in the small things that great conky-ness is achieved.

    It’s a very modular tool and it’s nice to get your text-filter-fu out.

  3. simpleboy Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 5:05 am

    Here is one that looks cool http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/

  4. Greta Halonen Says:
    May 29th, 2011 at 12:56 am

    This was actually an interesting subject, I am very lucky to be able to come to your weblog and I’ll bookmark this web page in order that I may come again one other time.

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