conky/doc/docs.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
"docbook-xml/docbookx.dtd"
[
<!ENTITY command_options SYSTEM "command_options.xml">
<!ENTITY config_settings SYSTEM "config_settings.xml">
<!ENTITY variables SYSTEM "variables.xml">
<!ENTITY lua SYSTEM "lua.xml">
]>
<refentry>
    <refentryinfo>
        <address>
            <email>brenden1@users.sourceforge.net</email>
        </address>
        <author>
            <firstname>Brenden</firstname>
            <surname>Matthews</surname>
        </author>
        <date>2012-05-03</date>
    </refentryinfo>
    <refmeta>
        <refentrytitle>conky</refentrytitle>
        <manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
    </refmeta>
    <refnamediv>
        <refname>conky</refname>
        <refpurpose>A system monitor for X originally based on the torsmo
        code, but more kickass. It just keeps on given'er. Yeah.</refpurpose>
    </refnamediv>
    <refsynopsisdiv>
        <cmdsynopsis>
            <command>conky</command>
            <arg>
                <replaceable>options</replaceable>
            </arg>
        </cmdsynopsis>
    </refsynopsisdiv>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Description</title>
        <para>Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on torsmo.
        Since its inception, Conky has changed significantly from its
        predecessor, while maintaining simplicity and configurability. Conky
        can display just about anything, either on your root desktop or in its
        own window. Not only does Conky have many built-in objects, it can
        also display just about any piece of information by using scripts and
        other external programs.</para>
        <para>Conky has more than 250 built in objects, including support for
        a plethora of OS stats (uname, uptime, CPU usage, mem usage, disk
        usage, "top" like process stats, and network monitoring, just to name
        a few), built in IMAP and POP3 support, built in support for many
        popular music players (MPD, XMMS2, Audacious), and much much
        more. Conky can display this info either as text, or using simple
        progress bars and graph widgets, with different fonts and
        colours.</para>
        <para>We are always looking for help, whether its reporting bugs,
        writing patches, or writing docs. Please use the facilities at
        SourceForge to make bug reports, feature requests, and submit patches,
        or stop by #conky on irc.freenode.net if you have questions or want to
        contribute.</para>
        <para>Thanks for your interest in Conky.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Compiling</title>
        <para>For users compiling from source on a binary distro, make sure
        you have the X development libraries installed (Unless you configure
        your build without X11). This should be a package along the lines of
        "libx11-dev" or "xorg-x11-dev" for X11 libs, and similar "-dev" format
        for the other libs required (depending on your build options). You
        should be able to see which extra packages you need to install by
        reading errors that you get from running `cmake'. The easiest way to
        view the available build options is to run `ccmake' or `cmake-gui'
        from the source tree, but be careful when disabling certain features
        as you may lose desired functionality. E.g., with BUILD_MATH disabled
        you won't get errors but logarithmic graphs will be normal graphs and
        gauges will miss their line.</para>
        <para>Conky has (for some time) been available in the repositories of
        most popular distributions. Here are some installation instructions
        for a few:</para>
        <para>Gentoo users -- Conky is in Gentoo's Portage... simply use
        "emerge app-admin/conky" for installation.</para>
        <para>Debian, etc. users -- Conky should be in your repositories, and
        can be installed by doing "aptitude install conky".</para>
        <para>Example to compile and run Conky with default components (note
        that some build options may differ for your system):</para>
        <variablelist>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <command>
                        <option>cmake</option>
                    </command>
                    <option>-D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:string=/usr .</option>
                </term>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <command>
                        <option>make</option>
                    </command>
                </term>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <command>
                        <option>make install</option>
                    </command>
                    <option># Optional</option>
                </term>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <command>
                        <option>src/conky</option>
                    </command>
                </term>
            </varlistentry>
        </variablelist>
        <para>Conky has been tested to be compatible with C99 C and C++0x C++,
        however it has not been tested with anything other than gcc, and is
        not guaranteed to work with other compilers.</para>
        <para>TIP: Try configuring Conky with `ccmake' or `cmake-gui' instead
        of just `cmake'.</para>
        <para></para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>You Should Know</title>
        <para>Conky is generally very good on resources. That said, the more
        you try to make Conky do, the more resources it is going to
        consume.</para>
        <para>An easy way to force Conky to reload your
        <filename>~/.config/conky/conky.conf</filename>: "killall -SIGUSR1
        conky". Saves you the trouble of having to kill and then
        restart.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
    <title>Options</title>
    <para>Command line options override configurations defined in
    configuration file.</para>&command_options;</refsect1>
    <refsect1>
    <title>Configuration Settings</title>
    <para>Default configuration file location is
    <filename>~/.config/conky/conky.conf</filename>&#160;or
    <filename>${sysconfdir}/conky/conky.conf</filename>. On most systems,
    sysconfdir is /etc, and you can find the sample config file there in
    <filename>/etc/conky/conky.conf</filename>.</para>
    <para>You might want to copy it to
    <filename>~/.config/conky/conky.conf</filename>&#160;and then start modifying
    it. Other configs can be found at
    <filename>
    https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky</filename>.</para>&config_settings;</refsect1>
    <refsect1>
    <title>Objects/Variables</title>
    <para>Colours are parsed using XParsecolor(), there might be a list of
    them:
    <filename>/usr/share/X11/rgb.txt</filename>. Colour can be also in #rrggbb
    format (hex).</para>
    <para>Some objects may create threads, and sometimes these threads will
    not be destroyed until Conky terminates. There is no way to destroy or
    clean up threads while Conky is running. For example, if you use an MPD
    variable, the MPD thread will keep running until Conky dies. Some threaded
    objects will use one of the parameters as a 'key', so that you only have 1
    relevant thread running (for example, the $curl, $rss and $weather objects
    launch one thread per URI).</para>&variables;</refsect1>
    <refsect1>
    <title>Lua API</title>
    <para>Conky features a Lua Programming API, and also ships with Lua
    bindings for some useful libraries. Note that the bindings require
    tolua++, which currently only compiles against Lua 5.1.</para>
    <para>To use Lua Conky, you first need to make sure you have a version of
    Conky with Lua support enabled (``conky -v'' will report this). Conky
    defines certain global functions and variables which can be accessed from
    Lua code running in Conky. Scripts must first be loaded using the lua_load
    configuration option. You then call functions in Lua via Conky's $lua,
    $lua_read, and Lua hooks.</para>
    <para>Be careful when creating threaded objects through the Lua API. You
    could wind up with a whole bunch of threads running if a thread is created
    with each iteration.</para>
    <para>At this time, the Lua API should not be considered stable and may
    change drastically from one release to another as it matures.</para>
    <para>NOTE: In order to accommodate certain features in the cairo
    library's API, Conky will export a few additional functions for the
    creation of certain structures. These are documented
    below.</para>&lua;</refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Examples</title>
        <variablelist>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <option>conky -t '${time %D %H:%M}' -o -u 30</option>
                </term>
                <listitem>Start Conky in its own window with date and clock as
                text and 30 sec update interval.</listitem>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <option>conky -a top_left -x 5 -y 500 -d</option>
                </term>
                <listitem>Start Conky to background at coordinates (5,
                500).</listitem>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <option>conky -C &gt; ~/.config/conky/conky.conf</option>
                </term>
                <listitem>Do not start Conky, but have it output the builtin
                default config file to
                <filename>~/.config/conky/conky.conf</filename>&#160;for later
                customising.</listitem>
            </varlistentry>
        </variablelist>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Files</title>
        <variablelist>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <filename>${sysconfdir}/conky/conky.conf</filename>
                </term>
                <listitem>Default system-wide configuration file. The value of
                ${sysconfdir} depends on the compile-time options (most likely
                /etc).</listitem>
            </varlistentry>
            <varlistentry>
                <term>
                    <filename>~/.config/conky/conky.conf</filename>
                </term>
                <listitem>Default personal configuration file.</listitem>
            </varlistentry>
        </variablelist>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Bugs</title>
        <para>Drawing to root or some other desktop window directly doesn't
        work with all window managers. Especially doesn't work well with Gnome
        and it has been reported that it doesn't work with KDE either.
        Nautilus can be disabled from drawing to desktop with program
        gconf-editor. Uncheck show_desktop in /apps/nautilus/preferences/.
        There is -w switch in Conky to set some specific window id. You might
        find xwininfo -tree useful to find the window to draw to. You can also
        use -o argument which makes Conky to create its own window. If you do
        try running Conky in its own window, be sure to read up on the
        own_window_type settings and experiment.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>See Also</title>
        <para>
            <filename>https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky</filename>
        </para>
        <para>#conky on irc.freenode.net</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Copying</title>
        <para>Copyright (c) 2005-2019 Brenden Matthews, Philip Kovacs, et. al.
        Any original torsmo code is licensed under the BSD license (see
        LICENSE.BSD for a copy). All code written since the fork of torsmo is
        licensed under the GPL (see LICENSE.GPL for a copy), except where
        noted differently (such as in portmon and audacious code which are
        LGPL, and prss which is an MIT-style license).</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
        <title>Authors</title>
        <para>The Conky dev team (see AUTHORS for a full list of
        contributors).</para>
    </refsect1>
</refentry>