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Glances - An Eye on your System

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Summary

Glances is an open-source system cross-platform monitoring tool. It allows real-time monitoring of various aspects of your system such as CPU, memory, disk, network usage etc. It also allows monitoring of running processes, logged in users, temperatures, voltages, fan speeds etc. It also supports container monitoring, it supports different container management systems such as Docker, LXC. The information is presented in an easy to read dashboard and can also be used for remote monitoring of systems via a web interface or command line interface. It is easy to install and use and can be customized to show only the information that you are interested in.

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In client/server mode, remote monitoring could be done via terminal, Web interface or API (XML-RPC and RESTful). Stats can also be exported to files or external time/value databases, CSV or direct output to STDOUT.

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Glances is written in Python and uses libraries to grab information from your system. It is based on an open architecture where developers can add new plugins or exports modules.

Project sponsorship

You can help me to achieve my goals of improving this open-source project or just say "thank you" by:

Any and all contributions are greatly appreciated.

Requirements

Glances is developed in Python. A minimal Python version 3.9 or higher should be installed on your system.

Note for Python 2 users

Glances version 4 or higher do not support Python 2 (and Python 3 < 3.9). Please uses Glances version 3.4.x if you need Python 2 support.

Dependencies:

Optional dependencies:

Installation

There are several methods to test/install Glances on your system. Choose your weapon!

PyPI: Pip, the standard way

Glances is on PyPI. By using PyPI, you will be using the latest stable version.

To install Glances, simply use the pip command line.

Warning: on modern Linux operating systems, you may have an externally-managed-environment error message when you try to use pip. In this case, go to the the PipX section below.

pip install --user glances

Note: Python headers are required to install psutil, a Glances dependency. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu the simplest is apt install python3-psutil or alternatively need to install first the python-dev package and gcc (python-devel on Fedora/CentOS/RHEL). For Windows, just install psutil from the binary installation file.

By default, Glances is installed without the Web interface dependencies. To install it, use the following command:

pip install --user 'glances[web]'

For a full installation (with all features, see features list bellow):

pip install --user 'glances[all]'

Features list:

To upgrade Glances to the latest version:

pip install --user --upgrade glances

The current develop branch is published to the test.pypi.org package index. If you want to test the develop version (could be instable), enter:

pip install --user -i https://test.pypi.org/simple/ Glances

PyPI: PipX, the alternative way

Install PipX on your system (apt install pipx on Ubuntu).

Install Glances (with all features):

pipx install 'glances[all]'

The glances script will be installed in the ~/.local/bin folder.

Docker: the cloudy way

Glances Docker images are available. You can use it to monitor your server and all your containers !

Get the Glances container:

docker pull nicolargo/glances:latest-full

The following tags are available:

Run last version of Glances container in console mode:

docker run --rm -e TZ="${TZ}" -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro -v /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:ro --pid host --network host -it nicolargo/glances:latest-full

By default, the /etc/glances/glances.conf file is used (based on docker-compose/glances.conf).

Additionally, if you want to use your own glances.conf file, you can create your own Dockerfile:

FROM nicolargo/glances:latest
COPY glances.conf /root/.config/glances/glances.conf
CMD python -m glances -C /root/.config/glances/glances.conf $GLANCES_OPT

Alternatively, you can specify something along the same lines with docker run options (notice the GLANCES_OPT environment variable setting parameters for the glances startup command):

docker run -e TZ="${TZ}" -v $HOME/.config/glances/glances.conf:/glances.conf:ro -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro -v /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:ro --pid host -e GLANCES_OPT="-C /glances.conf" -it nicolargo/glances:latest-full

Where $HOME/.config/glances/glances.conf is a local directory containing your glances.conf file.

Run the container in Web server mode:

docker run -d --restart="always" -p 61208-61209:61208-61209 -e TZ="${TZ}" -e GLANCES_OPT="-w" -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro -v /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:ro --pid host nicolargo/glances:latest-full

For a full list of options, see the Glances Docker documentation page.

GNU/Linux package

Glances is available on many Linux distributions, so you should be able to install it using your favorite package manager. Be aware that when you use this method the operating system package for Glances may not be the latest version and only basics plugins are enabled.

Note: The Debian package (and all other Debian-based distributions) do not include anymore the JS statics files used by the Web interface (see issue2021). If you want to add it to your Glances installation, follow the instructions: issue2021comment. In Glances version 4 and higher, the path to the statics file is configurable (see issue2612).

FreeBSD

On FreeBSD, package name depends on the Python version.

Check for Python version:

# python --version

Install the Glances package:

# pkg install pyXY-glances

Where X and Y are the Major and Minor Values of your Python System.

# Example for Python 3.11.3: pkg install py311-glances

NOTE: Check Glances Binary Package Version for your System Architecture. You must have the Correct Python Version Installed which corresponds to the Glances Binary Package.

To install Glances from Ports:

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/py-glances/
# make install clean

macOS

MacOS users can install Glances using Homebrew or MacPorts.

Homebrew

$ brew install glances

MacPorts

$ sudo port install glances

Windows

Install Python for Windows (Python 3.4+ ship with pip) and then run the following command:

$ pip install glances

Android

You need a rooted device and the Termux application (available on the Google Play Store).

Start Termux on your device and enter:

$ apt update
$ apt upgrade
$ apt install clang python
$ pip install fastapi uvicorn jinja2
$ pip install glances

And start Glances:

$ glances

You can also run Glances in server mode (-s or -w) in order to remotely monitor your Android device.

Source

To install Glances from source:

$ pip install https://github.com/nicolargo/glances/archive/vX.Y.tar.gz

Note: Python headers are required to install psutil.

Chef

An awesome Chef cookbook is available to monitor your infrastructure: https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/glances (thanks to Antoine Rouyer)

Puppet

You can install Glances using Puppet: https://github.com/rverchere/puppet-glances

Ansible

A Glances Ansible role is available: https://galaxy.ansible.com/zaxos/glances-ansible-role/

Shell tab completion

Glances 4.3.2 and higher includes shell tab autocompletion thanks to the --print-completion option.

For example, on a Linux operating system with Bash shell:

$ glances --print-completion bash | sudo tee -a /etc/bash_completion.d/glances
$ source /etc/bash_completion.d/glances

Following shells are supported: bash, zsh and tcsh.

Usage

For the standalone mode, just run:

$ glances

For the Web server mode, run:

$ glances -w

and enter the URL http://<ip>:61208 in your favorite web browser.

For the client/server mode, run:

$ glances -s

on the server side and run:

$ glances -c <ip>

on the client one.

You can also detect and display all Glances servers available on your network or defined in the configuration file:

$ glances --browser

You can also display raw stats on stdout:

$ glances --stdout cpu.user,mem.used,load
cpu.user: 30.7
mem.used: 3278204928
load: {'cpucore': 4, 'min1': 0.21, 'min5': 0.4, 'min15': 0.27}
cpu.user: 3.4
mem.used: 3275251712
load: {'cpucore': 4, 'min1': 0.19, 'min5': 0.39, 'min15': 0.27}
...

or in a CSV format thanks to the stdout-csv option:

$ glances --stdout-csv now,cpu.user,mem.used,load
now,cpu.user,mem.used,load.cpucore,load.min1,load.min5,load.min15
2018-12-08 22:04:20 CEST,7.3,5948149760,4,1.04,0.99,1.04
2018-12-08 22:04:23 CEST,5.4,5949136896,4,1.04,0.99,1.04
...

or in a JSON format thanks to the stdout-json option (attribute not supported in this mode in order to have a real JSON object in output):

$ glances --stdout-json cpu,mem
cpu: {"total": 29.0, "user": 24.7, "nice": 0.0, "system": 3.8, "idle": 71.4, "iowait": 0.0, "irq": 0.0, "softirq": 0.0, "steal": 0.0, "guest": 0.0, "guest_nice": 0.0, "time_since_update": 1, "cpucore": 4, "ctx_switches": 0, "interrupts": 0, "soft_interrupts": 0, "syscalls": 0}
mem: {"total": 7837949952, "available": 2919079936, "percent": 62.8, "used": 4918870016, "free": 2919079936, "active": 2841214976, "inactive": 3340550144, "buffers": 546799616, "cached": 3068141568, "shared": 788156416}
...

and RTFM, always.

Documentation

For complete documentation have a look at the readthedocs website.

If you have any question (after RTFM!), please post it on the official Q&A forum.

Gateway to other services

Glances can export stats to: CSV file, JSON file, InfluxDB, Cassandra, CouchDB, OpenTSDB, Prometheus, StatsD, ElasticSearch, RabbitMQ/ActiveMQ, ZeroMQ, Kafka, Riemann, Graphite and RESTful server.

How to contribute ?

If you want to contribute to the Glances project, read this wiki page.

There is also a chat dedicated to the Glances developers:

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Author

Nicolas Hennion (@nicolargo) <nicolas@nicolargo.com>

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License

Glances is distributed under the LGPL version 3 license. See COPYING for more details.

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