loadbars

README

loadbars - A small and humble tool to observe server loads

Description

Loadbars is a tool that can be used to observe CPU loads of several remote servers at once in real time. It connects with SSH (using SSH public/private key auth) to several servers at once and vizualizes all server CPUs and memory statistics right next each other (either summarized or each core separately). Loadbars is not a tool for collecting CPU loads and drawing graphs for later analysis. However, since such tools require a significant amount of time before producing results, Loadbars lets you observe the current state immediately. Loadbars does not remember or record any load information. It just shows the current CPU usages like top or vmstat does.

Tested platforms

This version of loadbars has been tested on:

• Fedora Linux 43 and most modern Linux distributions (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, etc.)
• macOS (Darwin) - can connect to remote Linux servers via SSH (local monitoring not supported)

Note: Local monitoring requires Linux with /proc filesystem. Remote hosts must be Linux (using /proc filesystem). macOS can be used as a client to monitor remote Linux servers.

Build and run

SDL2 Dependencies

Loadbars requires SDL2 for the display window. Install it for your platform:

Fedora Linux / RHEL / CentOS

sudo dnf install SDL2-devel

macOS

brew install sdl2

Using Mage (recommended)

Build the binary:

mage build
./loadbars --hosts localhost

Install to GOPATH/bin (e.g. ~/go/bin):

mage install

Run tests:

mage test

I like flying elephants

For any startup params help check out --help on command line or h during program execution.

A few examples however

loadbars --extended 1 --showcores 1 --height 300 --hosts localhost

loadbars --hosts localhost,server1.example.com,server2.example.com

loadbars --cluster foocluster (foocluster is in /etc/clusters [ClusterSSH])

More examples, using shell expansion

loadbars servername{01,02,03}.example.com

loadbars servername{01..50}.example.com --showcores 1

Running from Source

To run loadbars directly from the source directory:

./loadbars --hosts localhost

Or with remote servers:

./loadbars --hosts root@server1,root@server2 --showcores 1

SSH Configuration

Loadbars requires SSH public/private key authentication. Make sure:

• You have SSH keys set up (~/.ssh/id_rsa or similar)
• Your public key is in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on remote servers
• SSH agent is running (ssh-agent), or passwordless keys are configured

More usage

Hotkeys

Press these keys while loadbars is running (see also h for a short list on stdout):

Key	Action
1	Toggle CPU cores (one bar per core vs one aggregate bar per host)
2 / m	Toggle memory bars (RAM left, Swap right per host)
3 / n	Toggle network bars (RX/TX summed across all non-lo interfaces per host)
e	Toggle extended display (1px peak line on CPU bars: max system+user over last samples)
g	Toggle global average CPU line (1px red line showing mean CPU usage across all hosts)
i	Toggle global I/O average line (1px pink line showing mean iowait+IRQ across all hosts)
s	Toggle host separator lines (1px yellow vertical line between hosts)
h	Print hotkey list to stdout
q	Quit
w	Write current settings to ~/.loadbarsrc
a	Increase CPU average samples (affects extended peak history length)
y	Decrease CPU average samples (min 1)
d	Increase net average samples
c	Decrease net average samples (min 1)
f	Link scale up (net utilization reference)
v	Link scale down (net utilization reference)
Arrow keys	Resize window (left/right: width, up/down: height)

CPU stuff

• st = Steal in % [see man proc] (extended), Color: Red
• gt = Guest in % [see man proc] (extended), Color: Red
• sr = Soft IRQ usage in % (extended), Color: White
• ir = IRQ usage in % (extended), Color: White
• io = IOwait cpu sage in %, Color: Purple
• id = Idle cpu usage in % (extended), Color: Black
• ni = Nice cpu usage in %, Color: Green
• us = User cpu usage in %, Color: Yellow, dark yellow if to>50%, orange if to>50%
• sy = System cpu sage in %, Color: Blue, lighter blue if >30%
• to = Total CPU usage, which is (100% - id)
• pk = Max us+sy peak of last avg. samples (extended)
• 1px horizontal line: Maximum sy+us+io of last 'avg' samples (extended)

Memory stuff

• Ram = System ram usage in %, Color: Dark grey
• Swp = System swap usage in %, Color: Grey

Network stuff

• Rxb = Incoming (received) traffic in %, Color: Light green, normal green if >100% while using low netlink reference. Bar comes from top and is half width.
• Txb = Outgoing (transmitted) traffic in %, Color: Light green, normal green if >100% while using low netlink reference. Bar comes from bottom and is half width.

When network bar is red: No non-loopback interface exists on the specific remote host.

Aggregated interfaces: Loadbars sums RX/TX across all non-loopback interfaces (e.g. eth0, wlan0, enp0s3) and shows the combined total. Loopback (lo) is always excluded.

Link speed (netlink): Used to compute utilization %. Default is gbit. Set e.g. netlink=100mbit or netlink=10gbit in ~/.loadbarsrc or --netlink 100mbit.

Config file support

Loadbars tries to read ~/.loadbarsrc and it's possible to configure any option you find in --help but without leading '--'. For comments just use the '#' sign. Sample config:

showcores=1   # Always show cores on startup
netlink=gbit  # Link speed for utilization % (optional)

will always show all CPU cores. If you press the 'w' hotkey during program execution your config file will be overwritten using the current settings.

License

See package description or project website.

The Go build of loadbars links to go-sdl2 (github.com/veandco/go-sdl2), which is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause license. That license is compatible with loadbars' use and does not impose additional restrictions on distribution. The full copyright notice and license text for go-sdl2 are in the LICENSE file.

Author

Paul Buetow - http://paul.buetow.org