Different Memory Monitor dockapp

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Different Memory Monitor dockapp
started by: cbagger01

Posted by cbagger01 on May 26 2005,03:04

The existing "asmem" dockapp is nice, but it is kinda hard to read on some displays.

I like the format of the wmcpuload dockapp better. It is much easier to read.

There is a dockapp called "wmmemload", that performs the function of asmem but with the style of wmcpuload.

It also allows you to filter out memory buffer usage and/or memory cache usage via command line switches, if you prefer to see your hard memory usage levels without those variable memory consumers.

It is also a very small dockapp with no extra dependencies, which is good if it is to be considered as a replacement for the base distro.

Here is the author's home page with screenshots:

< http://www.markstaggs.net/cgi-bin/newindex.pl?&page=wmmemload >

You can get a package from Debian testing repository:

< http://packages.debian.org/testing/x11/wmmemload >

Check it out.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on May 26 2005,06:34

One thing I like about asmem is how much it tells you.

how much ram you have, how much is being used, the max that has been used since boot, and how much you have left. Ditto for swap.

It's nice to know exactly how many k of ram I have left on some of the boxes I mess with, so I don't load the wrong .dsl and make things go boom. ^_^

-J.P.

Posted by humpty on May 02 2006,15:46

I'd like to revamp this topic as I have just got bored with torsmo. dsl-fluxbox before torsmo had a much nicer retro feel, it was damn cool!

I know how to turn torsmo off, but I don't know how to get the old dsl 1.8 dockapps back, I think maybe the binaries were taken out.

Posted by mikshaw on May 02 2006,18:07

Yes, they were removed. If you still have an older DSL, you can copy the apps over from that. I couldn't say exactly which files are needed, but dockapps are typically made up of only one or two files, usually found in /usr/X11R6. There are also some dockapps available through myDSL.

You might also find them in various deb repositories. My guess is that most of them will work without trouble in DSL, unless you try some that require python or other depends that are not in DSL.

Posted by tawalker on May 19 2006,20:07

I'm rather a fan of dockapps, and was a little miffed when most of them were removed from the last few versions of DSL! The great thing is, there are quite a few dockapps available as MyDSL extensions, and it's even possible to 'roll your own' MyDSLs by compiling from the source code. I did this with a couple of dockapps which I really wanted to add to my pendrive DSL system (wmbinclock was one), and in a nutshell, here's how:

- I have another Linux box at home, so I compiled the dockapp binary on there; it helps if the app doesn't have much in the way of dependencies, so it can stand on its own.
- Once I installed the app onto the system, I made a tarball of the executable, which ISTR usually ended up in /usr/bin/. The full path must be stored in the .tar.gz archive for the rest to work.
- This is the key to getting the app to install in DSL with the MyDSL packages: rename the file from '*.tar.gz' to '*.dsl', and place it in the same location as the other packages.

Hope this helps someone else - please let me know if anyone wants the wmbinclock package I made, and I'll see what I can do.

Tim

Posted by mikshaw on May 19 2006,21:15

If you have working myDSL extensions, please submit them to extensionsatdamnsmalllinuxdotorg! =o)

One thing about using dockapps in DSL that i find useful is that most of them do not need to be in a particular location. Even if they were compiled to run in /usr/bin, most can easily be run from a directory that is already writeable. When I run dockapps in DSL they run from /home/dsl/bin, which i've added to PATH.