Install Glances on Slackware
Glances is a nice little system monitor for Linux, written entirely in Python.
Installing it is not too hard, and I completed all of the operations below in about 30 minutes on my small server.
1. Download and install the Glances dependencies
There are only two dependencies for Glances (beyond Python 2.6 itself):
- libstatgrab - the C library to grab stats from the /proc and system.
- pystatgrab - the Python library to libstatgrab
These two should be installed in the order shown above:
- libstatgrab:
Please make sure you download the proper version or you'll run into troubles with pystatgrab!!
Other than this, installing it is fairly straightforward:
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install && sudo /sbin/ldconfig -v
Done! Moving right along...
- pystatgrab:
This one is a bit more tricky, but still fairly simple, provided you install everything as root:
root@udon:/home/gil/files/download/pystatgrab-0.5# ./setup.py install running install running build running build_py running build_ext running install_lib copying build/lib.linux-i686-2.6/statgrab.py -> /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages copying build/lib.linux-i686-2.6/_statgrab.so -> /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages byte-compiling /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/statgrab.py to statgrab.pyc running install_egg_info Writing /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pystatgrab-0.5-py2.6.egg-info
2. Install Glances itself.
First, tar & gunzip the archive.
Then, run the command autogen.sh, which will run a standard configure on the source tree.
Finally, a simple make && make install creates the file /usr/local/bin/glances.py.
I like to run the following in order not to type the .py extension:
root@udon:/usr/local/bin# ln -v --symbolic ./glances.py ./glances `./glances' -> `./glances.py'
And... you are done!
Here is the nice result:
3. Is it worth it?
Well, glances is nice, but it takes too much CPU as far as I am concerned. On my small Atom-based server, running glances can take up to 12% of CPU. Other tools, such as nmon or htop provide just as much information as glances, while being easier on small machines.
But it's a nice tool overall, so try it and see if it works for you.