The sensor browser displays the registered hosts and their sensors in a tree form. Click on the tree handles to open or close a branch. Each sensor monitors a certain system value.
To connect to a new host use from the menu. A dialog box will appear and allows you to enter the name of the host you want to connect to. Below the name you can choose the connection method. The default is ssh, the secure shell. Alternatively the rsh, the remote shell, or the daemon mode can be used. Click to establish the connection. Shortly afterwards the new host will appear in the sensor browser and you can browse the list of sensors.
To establish a connection, a program called ksysguardd, that can be started in the following two modes, must be installed on the new host.
You can start ksysguardd at boot time in
Daemon mode by adding -d
as the
argument. In this case, you have to select daemon mode at the connection
dialog of ksysguard.
A disadvantage of this connection type is that you won't be able to kill or
renice a process with the Process Controller and
the data exchange over network won't be encrypted.
In this mode ksysguardd is started at
connecting time by ksysguard. To make that possible,
its location needs to be included in your PATH
.
Unfortunately the ssh does not source your .profile
file,
so your regular PATH
setting will not be available.
Instead it uses a default PATH
like
/bin:/usr/bin
.
Since it is very likely that KDE is not installed in these folders you need
to create or update a file in your home folder. The file is called
environment
and needs to be in a hidden folder called
.ssh
. See the manual page for
ssh for more details. The file needs to contain a
line similar to:
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/opt/kde/bin
assuming that ksysguardd can be found under
/opt/kde/bin/ksysguardd
.
When using ssh you should make sure that
you have your identity.pub
installed on the remote machine
and the host key of the remote machine is already registered on your machine.
The easiest way to check this is to type ssh remotehost
ksysguardd
in a shell. If you are greeted by
ksysguardd you can type quit
and everything is in order.
For experts: ksysguardd is a very small program that is only linked against the libc. So it can also be used on machines that do not have a full blown KDE installed, such as servers. If you choose the custom command option in the host connector you need to specify the complete command to start ksysguardd.
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