The Work Space
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The Work Space

The work space is organized as work sheets. Select New from the File menu to create a new work sheet. A dialog will appear where you can set the name, the dimension and the update interval of the work sheet. To remove a work sheet again, select Close from the File menu. Any modifications will be saved to the work sheet file. If a work sheet has never been saved, you will be asked for a file name. Work sheets consist of cells organized as a grid.

Each cell can be filled with a display for one or more sensors. You can fill a cell by dragging a sensor from the sensor browser and dropping it over the cell. If there is more than one type of display available for that type of sensor, a popup menu will appear. You can then select which display you prefer to use. Certain types of displays can display more than one sensor. Add more sensors to a display by dragging them over from the sensor browser and dropping them over the already existing display.

Work sheets can be configured by clicking Configure Worksheet at the Edit menu. In the appearing dialog you can set the dimension and the update interval. This update interval is used by all displays of the worksheet, which has the use update interval of worksheet set in its timer configuration dialog.

The entry Configure Style of the Settings menu gives you the possibility to configure the global style attributes and apply them to the current active worksheet.

Displays can be configured by clicking with the right mouse button on them. A popup menu appear where you can select whether you want to change the properties of that display, remove it from the work sheet, change its update interval type and value or pause and restart its updating.

Signal Plotter

The signal plotter prints samples of one or more sensors over time. If, several sensors are displayed, the values are piled in different colors. If the display is large enough a grid will be displayed to show the range of the plotted samples. By default, the automatic range mode is active so the minimum and maximum values will be set automatically. Sometimes you want fixed minimum and maximum values. In that case, you can deactivate automatic range mode and set the values in the properties dialog.

Multimeter

The multimeter displays the sensor values as a digital meter. In the properties dialog you can specify a lower and upper limit. If the range is exceeded, the display is colored in the alarm color.

Process Controller

The Process Controller gives you a list of processes on your system. The list can be sorted by each column. Just press the left mouse button at the head of the column.

The list shows the following information about each process. Please note that not all properties are available on every operating system.

Name

The name of the executable that started the process.

PID

The Process ID. A unique number for each process.

PPID

The Process ID of the process parent.

UID

The ID of the user that started the process.

GID

The ID of the group the process belongs to.

Status

The process status.

User%

The processor load of the process in user space (in percent).

System%

The processor load of the process in system space (in percent).

Nice

The scheduling priority.

VmSize

The total amount of virtual memory used by the process (in kBytes).

VmRss

The total amount of physical memory used by the process (in kBytes).

Login

The login name of the user that started the process.

Command

The complete start command of the process.

Underneath the table you find four buttons which will be described now from left to right.

The Tree View

The tree view has been designed to show the relationships between the running processes. A process that is started by another process is called the child of that process. A tree is an elegant way to show this parent-child relationship. The init process is the ancestor of all processes.

If you are not interested in the children of a particular process you can click on the little box to the left of the parent and the subtree will collapse. Another click on that box will unfold the subtree again.

The Process Filter

The Process Filter can be used to reduce the number of processes displayed in the table. You can filter out processes you are not interested in. Currently you can display all processes, system processes only, user processes only or your processes only.

The Refresh Button

This button can be used to force an immediate update of the process list.

The Kill Button

If you have selected one or more processes you can press the kill button to kill them. A so called SIGKIL is sent to the processes which causes them to terminate immediately. If these applications still have unsaved data this data will be lost. So use this button with care.

BarGraph

The bargraph displays the sensor values as dancing bars. In the properties dialog you can specify minimum and maximum values of range and a lower and upper limit. If the range is exceeded, the display is colored in the alarm color.

Sensor Logger

The sensor logger does not display any values, but logs them in a file with additional date and time information. For each sensor you can specify a lower and upper limit in the properties dialog. If the range is exceeded, the entry of the sensor table is colored in the alarm color and a knotify event is sent.

Log File

The log file monitor displays the content of a file e.g. /var/log/messages. In the properties dialog, you can compose a list of regular expressions that will be compared with the content of the file. If one of the expressions match, a knotify event will be sent.

List View

The listview displays the data of some sensors in the form of a table.

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