1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
2 <!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd" [
4 <!ENTITY testtable SYSTEM "test.xml">
5 <!ENTITY command_options SYSTEM "command_options.xml">
6 <!ENTITY config_settings SYSTEM "config_settings.xml">
7 <!ENTITY variables SYSTEM "variables.xml">
13 <email>brenden1@users.sourceforge.net</email>
16 <firstname>Brenden</firstname>
17 <surname>Matthews</surname>
19 <date>2007-08-08</date>
23 <refentrytitle>conky</refentrytitle>
24 <manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
28 <refname>conky</refname>
29 <refpurpose>A system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo code, but more kickass. It just keeps on given'er. Yeah.</refpurpose>
34 <command>conky</command>
35 <arg><replaceable>options</replaceable></arg>
40 <title>Description</title>
42 Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo code.
43 Since it's original conception, Conky has changed a fair bit from it's predecessor.
44 Conky can display just about anything, either on your root desktop or in it's own window.
45 Conky has many built-in objects, as well as the ability to execute programs and scripts,
46 then display the output from stdout.
49 We are always looking for help, and anyone interested in becoming a developer is welcome.
50 Please use the facilities at SourceForge to make bug reports, feature requests, and submit patches.
53 Thanks for your interest in Conky.
58 <title>Compiling</title>
60 For users compiling from source, make sure you have the X development libraries installed.
61 This should be a package along the lines of "libx11-dev or xorg-x11-dev".
64 Gentoo users -- Conky is in Gentoo's Portage... simply use "emerge app-admin/conky" for installation.
65 There is also usually an up-to-date ebuild within Conky's package or in Svn.
68 Debian,etc. users -- Conky will be in Debian's repositories soon (by mid-September, hopefully), and then
69 Ubuntu shortly thereafter. Until then, "dpkg -i" the .deb package to install.
72 Example to compile and run Conky with all optional components (note that some configure options may differ for your system):
77 <command><option>sh autogen.sh</option></command> <option># Only required if building from Svn</option>
82 <command><option>./configure </option></command><option>--prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --datadir=/usr/share --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var/lib --disable-own-window --enable-audacious[=yes|no|legacy] --enable-bmpx --disable-hddtemp --disable-mpd --enable-xmms2 --disable-portmon --disable-network --enable-debug --disable-x11 --disable-double-buffer --disable-xdamage --disable-xft</option>
87 <command><option>make</option></command>
92 <command><option>make install</option></command> <option># Optional</option>
97 <command><option>src/conky</option></command>
102 Conky probably doesn't compile with compilers other than gcc and icc.
103 It doesn't compile with C89 compiler and not even with pure C99.
104 It uses a few things that might not exist: strdup(), strcasecmp(), strncasecmp(),
105 optarg variable with getopt() and long long (not in C89). Crashes in file system
106 statistics stuff when compiled with icc, I don't know exactly why.
109 You can disable 'drawing to own window' feature in case you don't need it by passing
110 --disable-own-window to configure -script.
120 <title>You Should Know</title>
122 Conky is generally very good on resources. However, certain objects in
123 Conky are harder on resources then others. In particular, the $tail,
124 $top, $font, and $graph objects are quite costly in comparison to the rest of Conky.
127 If you do use them, please do not complain about memory or CPU usage,
128 unless you think something's seriously wrong (mem leak, etc.).
131 An easy way to force Conky to reload your ~/.conkyrc: "killall -SIGUSR1 conky".
132 Saves you the trouble of having to kill and then restart.
135 IMPORTANT: For previous Conky users, Conky 1.3 no longer supports the metar stuff.
136 mdsplib was causing way too many problems. Hopefully there'll be a better solution in Conky 2.x...
141 <title>Options</title>
143 <para>Command line options override configurations defined in configuration file.</para>
150 <title>Configuration Settings</title>
153 Default configuration file is $HOME/.conkyrc (can be changed from
154 conky.c among other things). See conkyrc.sample. If installing from Debian package,
155 this should be in /usr/share/doc/conky/examples ("gunzip conkyrc.sample.gz" to get conkyrc.sample).
158 You might want to copy it to $HOME/.conkyrc and then start modifying it.
159 Other configs can be found at http://conky.sf.net
166 <title>Variables</title>
169 Colors are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of them:
170 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Also, <ulink url="http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html">
171 http://sedition.com/perl/rgb.html</ulink>.
172 Color can be also in #rrggbb format (hex).
174 Note that when displaying bytes, power is 1024 and not 1000 so 1M really
175 means 1024*1024 bytes and not 1000*1000.
182 <title>Examples</title>
186 <term><varname>conky </varname><option>-t '${time %D %H:%M}' -o -u 30</option></term>
187 <listitem>Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as text and 30 sec update interval.</listitem>
191 <term><varname>conky </varname><option>-a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d</option></term>
192 <listitem>Start Conky to background at coordinates (5, 500).</listitem>
200 <filename>~/.conkyrc</filename> default configuration file
206 Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't work with
207 all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome and it has
208 been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either. Nautilus can be
209 disabled from drawing to desktop with program gconf-editor. Uncheck
210 show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/. There is -w switch in Conky
211 to set some specific window id. You might find xwininfo -tree useful to
212 find the window to draw to. You can also use -o argument which makes
213 Conky to create its own window.
218 <title>See Also</title>
219 <para><ulink url="http://conky.sourceforge.net">
220 http://conky.sourceforge.net</ulink></para>
221 <para><ulink url="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky">
222 http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/conky</ulink></para>
224 #conky on irc.freenode.net
229 <title>Authors</title>
231 The Conky dev team. What's up now!