Chinny Fight!

I neglected to feed my chinchillas for a day — then I fed them & was surprised to find myself in the midst of a …… CHINCHILLA FIGHT!!!!

My Computer Setup

I was in a cleaning mood today & eventually got to my desk where my PC is at. I think cleaning was waypast due… anyway – it was a photo oppurtunity. Here’s my current setup:

Laptop Specs: IBM T61, Pentium Dual Core Centrino Duo @ 1.83GHz, 1.5gb ram, 50gb hard drive, docking station, Ubuntu Hardy Heron v8.04
Desktop Specs: MSI P35D3 motherboard, Pentium Core 2 Duo @2.66GHz, 3.2gb DDR3-1066 ram, 2x 500gb and 1x 100gb internal hard drives, GeForce 8800 GTS video card with 512mb memory, Ubuntu Hardy Heron v8.04

Desktop setup

Desktop setup

Books that made it to my desk... What's that under my right monitor? Is that a PHP book? hahaha

Top: APC Back-UPS RS 1500, 6 external hard drives (a little over 3 terabytes of storage space), PC painted by my friend Nick, and Laptop.
Left: 22″ Element Flat TV attached to my desktop via HDMI
Right: 22″ Samsung SnycMaster 226bw monitor attached to my laptop via docked vga.

Conky – a great system monitoring tool

I installed conky recently and was impressed by what I got — a efficent, extremely customizable, lightweigt system monitoring applet. It sits on your desktop & displays various aspects of your OS, hardware, etc

I installed using

apt-get install conky

Then had to add the app to my startup — in ubuntu hardy (8.10) I did:

Ubuntu menu -> System -> Preferences -> Sessions -> Add -> name & command = ‘conky’ -> OK -> close (or type “gnome-session-properties” at a command prompt)

At that point, conky should start when you login. Next, you need to configure it. There are lots of sites out there — and DO NOT forget the man entry

man conky

I played around with my conky.conf file a git – here’s what I came up with:

Here’s my conky.conf file: (default location /etc/conky/conky.conf)

alignment bottom_right
double_buffer yes
background yes
border_width 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
font 6×10
gap_x 5
gap_y 60
minimum_size 300 5
net_avg_samples 2
no_buffers yes
out_to_console no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type normal
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 2.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none

TEXT
${color #329966}Right now it be ${color #669932}$time$color ${color #329966}and i’m listenin to $color
${color #329966}spinnin $color ${color #669932}${font Bitstream Vera Sans:size=8}${exec rhythmbox-client –no-start –print-playing-format %at}$color, ${color #329966}$color ${color #669932}${font Bitstream Vera Sans:size=9}${exec rhythmbox-client –no-start –print-playing-format %tt}$color ${color #329966}by$color ${color #669932}${exec rhythmbox-client –no-start –print-playing-format %aa}$color
${color #329966}and I have been up for$color ${color #329966}$uptime$color ${color #329966}incase you were wondering….$color
$hr
${color grey}Frequency (in GHz):$color $freq_g
${color #99ff66}Processes: $processes Running: $running_processes ${cpu}% – ${cpubar 4}$color
${color #ffffcc}RAM Usage:$color $mem/$memmax – $memperc% ${membar 4}
${color grey}Swap Usage:$color $swap/$swapmax – $swapperc% ${swapbar 4}
$hr
${color #9f9fed}Wired address: ${addr eth0} Wireless address: ${addr wlan0}
${color #9f9fed}Net Down: ${downspeed eth0} k/s Net Up: ${upspeed eth0} k/s$color
${color #9f9fed}Wireless:${wireless_essid net} Signal Strength: ${wireless_link_qual net} ${wireless_link_bar 4}$color
$hr
${color grey}File systems:
/ $color${fs_free /}/${fs_size /} ${fs_bar 6 /}
$hr
${color grey}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${color #87a8a8}${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color #87a8a8}${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${color #87a8a8}${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${color #87a8a8}${top name 4} ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top mem 4}
${color #87a8a8}${top name 5} ${top pid 5} ${top cpu 5} ${top mem 5}
$hr
${color grey}Mem usage
${color #87a8a8}${top_mem name 1}${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${color #87a8a8}${top_mem name 2}${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem cpu 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${color #87a8a8}${top_mem name 3}${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem cpu 3} ${top_mem mem 3}
${color #87a8a8}${top_mem name 4}${top_mem pid 4} ${top_mem cpu 4} ${top_mem mem 4}
${color #87a8a8}${top_mem name 5}${top_mem pid 5} ${top_mem cpu 5} ${top_mem mem 5}
$hr
${color grey}Outbound Connection (${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 count}) ${alignr} Remote Service/Port${color #87a8a8}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 2}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 3}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 4}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 5} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 5}
${color grey}Inbound Connection (${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count}) ${alignr} Local Service/Port${color #87a8a8}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 2}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 3}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 4}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 5} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 5}