Release Pandora System Info

[porg]

I reworked the help screen a bit, is this better?

• It's good that both sides have their heading now, more clarity.
  I suggest to name the headings "Info panels" & "Commands".
  
• The grey box behind "Info panels" is irritating. If a box there, then also one behind "Commands". At best no box at all. As you have headings on both sides now, the content segregation is now anyhow clear.
  

[*]"(change with left/right)" should be aligned at where all other panel names start (right above the "C" of CPU panel).

• But again, this differing notation "(...)" is irritating again. Better would be to use:
  <left-arrow-symbol> Previous panel
  
• <right-arrow-symbol> Next panel
  

[*]Or use

• left/right previous/next panel
  

[*]Then you are consistent with "up/down log interval +- 1s"

I managed to fix the timeshift issue without using any more resources

Great!

The only thing I'm not gonna do is to display the log filename when you stop logging

The point here is, that the keypress action must have a feedback in the GUI, so we must anyhow at least inform with "Logging stopped, file closed" and then hide it after $info-timeout secs, thus I thought why not add the specific info right away with it. If you remember the "…hhmm…" part (only 4 digits) then you most likely can identify your session, the date is likely the same for all of your successive tests.

Server based plotting service would be possible but quite a bit of work to make it work reliably. It might be easier to package gnuplot in a PND and add some basic zenity stuff to select a logfile to plot.

If you can manage to include that gnuplot into the package, and that sysinfo properly interacts with it, great!


My thought behind server-side plotting was to establish a standard graph look, so that this can work as a standard for Pandora users comparing their specs, avoiding to get plots from dozen different softwares with hundred of different graph styles.


By supplying sysinfo with gnuplot and your script interface between them, this comparability is achieved! Users will generate their plots with the same software & settings, and can upload those pix right away. Wonderful!


UPDATE: Keep in mind to create the plot templates in a way that they are suited for comparison. For the Y-axis use 0 as the bottom point and the possible design maximum value (+ some extra, should some units maybe top that) as the top point. Then you can put graph pix side-a-side (or overlay them with reduced opacity), and get a reliable comparison. For the x-axis (time) I think it is not really possible to use a single standard, as some observations may be for minutes, some for hours, some for days. In comparison situations one must (mentally) stretch them accordingly. But if the Y-axis is suited for comparison, then, that's a big point!

 

[Stainy]

It should be in System.

Hehe yeah it is.. I was installing and uninstalling.. I was looking for it when it wasn't installed

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Dunno if it has been asked before, but can it run windowed ?

 

[_wb_]

Sure, just press "F" to toggle fullscreen.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Cool, thx.

 

[Askarus]

Untill I used this little treasure some days ago I didn't noticed how great it is.


The battery discharging is so DETAILED, also the CPU usage.


Here is some idea I have and I'd like to see: RAM usage.


If possible RAM usage on internal and Swap file would be nice.


Big thanks for this tool :wub: .

 

[porg]

RAM usage on internal and Swap file would be nice

+1

 

[_wb_]

The battery panel will be even more detailed in the next version, with an extra zoom level and dark green showing the extrapolated value while light green is the last actual reported value, which lags behind a bit.

I could add RAM/swap info, but where? It is not really enough to fill a new panel (unless I would do something like top and show which programs are using most RAM etc, but I don't really want to replace top), so I would probably add it to either the CPU or the Storage panel, I'm just not sure which makes most sense. Suggestions are welcome.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Take a look at gkrellm's ram bar.


It's a simple bar with three indicators.


You can add this under the disk space pie.

 

[Neelix]

Adding it to the storage panel seems like the most logical place to put it to my mind.


- Neelix

 

[Askarus]

Take a look at gkrellm's ram bar.


It's a simple bar with three indicators.


You can add this under the disk space pie.

Right. That's the best place I think.


it would be too much if it's on one of the other panels.

 

[Zero3K]

How about adding a panel that shows the currently accessed files?

 

[porg]

How about adding a panel that shows the currently accessed files?

try lsof in the command line.


IMHO Sysinfo should be precise in the overall hardware usage monitoring, but things like open processes, open files, etc are out of its scope.


Thus things which can be achieved with unix command line applications (and their frontends) shall be achieved with those softwares themselves. (lsof, top, etc)

 

[_wb_]

I agree with porg here, I don't intend to replace lsof, top, du, etc. - those standard tools (and their frontends) are much better at that. My goal is to have ridiculously accurate overall hardware monitoring, mostly from the power consumption point of view. So it shows overall battery statistics, overall CPU statistics, overall disk space statistics, and overall network statistics. It doesn't show which process is consuming what percentage of CPU use, which files or folders are biggest or currently opened, or which processes are transferring data over which network protocols. All of that is possible, but 1) it would take much more resources to gather all that information constantly, so you might end up with a monitoring program that itself eats 50% cpu power, and 2) it is much harder to show all of that specific information in a nice way.


My original idea was just to have a battery meter that is so accurate that you can literally see the charge level go up or down. I then added the CPU panel because of course power consumption is related to CPU usage, so I added something to monitor that and also the powersaving C-states. To be honest, the storage panel was added just because I was looking for something to put in a third panel, since I had code to show multiple panels so I could just as well add a third panel. Also I thought it would be cool to have something that lets you instantly see the partitions and the amount of free room on SD cards as you insert them - I don't have a lot of SD cards, but I imagine some people might have quite a few of them and maybe forget to label them physically, so then this storage panel is really useful to quickly scan a heap of SD cards. The network panel was added later because it was a feature request.


I could add more panels, but I'm a bit hesitant because I like the way the overview screen looks at the moment; it would not be that hard to change that 2x2 overview to e.g. a 2x3 grid, but it would become a lot less readable. So there would have to be a really good reason to add extra panels.

 

[_wb_]

Version 0.3 is on the repo.


New things:


- Plot one or more logfiles with gnuplot (included in the PND)


- I think I took most of porg's comments into account


- RAM/swap meter in the Storage panel (swap only shows up if you're using a non-zero amount of swap)


- minor bugfixes


The logs are saved in appdata/sysinfo/logs, and the plots are in appdata/sysinfo/plots. Several gnuplot examples are included, and you can change them or add your own simply by modifying or adding .gnuplot files in the plots directory.


The plots are displayed with ristretto, to exit that viewer you first have to exit full-screen with F11 and then press CTRL-Q. I don't know why CTRL-Q doesn't work while in fullscreen.


This version will probably be the last one, at least for a while. It now has the functionality it needs to have in my opinion. Suggestions for improvements or feature requests are of course still welcome.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Nice.


Did you tried to separate zram usage from drive swap ?

 

[_wb_]

No, the swap indicator is everything together. Since I'm getting the info from /proc/meminfo, I can't see the difference. I don't tend to actually use the swap much - multitasking for me mostly means having a bunch of terminals open all the time and only one or two other applications at a time, and I have a 512MB unit, so I rarely run out of RAM.

 

[ZenphiR]

Recently I have updated my (Giga)Pandora to Kernel 3.2 / FW 1.52


Pandora System Info tells me the selected CPU-profile: 1,1Ghz, OPP5 (or any other OPP5 profile) = OPP4...?


I have tried all profiles and settings in CPU-Settings to get OPP5 in System Info.


How can I check what OPP level is really active?


Edit: Thanks _wb_ & Askarus, I didn't know OPP4 is max. setting on DM3730

 

[_wb_]

OPP4 is the maximum setting for the Gigandora AFAIK.

 

[Askarus]

Thanks for the update.


Will test is tomorrow .


@ Zenphir: DM3730 has only OPP4 level.


(DM 3730 is the CPU of the Giga Pandora just in cast you didn't know)