Conky

I like knowing how much CPU and RAM I have in use as well as some other runtime system info, and I use conky to put that seemlessly into my desktop. First thing we'll need to do is get it:
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install conky

Then we can open up a console and launch it from the command line to see what defaults we have. Let's see what we have here; seperate window, bunch of stuff I don't care about, missing some stuff I want to know... It's something but not what I want. Since this build is all about getting everything exactly the way you want it, lets create a custom configuration file so we can tweak the settings. I just need to create a .conkyrc file in my home directory and paste in something like this:
# my .conkyrc file
own_window yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar
background no
double_buffer yes
use_spacer yes
use_xft yes
update_interval 5.0
minimum_size 400 5
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes
draw_borders no
uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase
stippled_borders 8
border_margin 4
border_width 1
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
own_window_colour brown
own_window_transparent yes
alignment top_right
gap_x 10
gap_y 30
override_utf8_locale no
xftfont Terminus:size=8
xftalpha 0.8
TEXT
${offset 300}${color }CPU ${color } $cpu%
${offset 300}${color light grey}${cpugraph 13,100}
${offset 300}${color }RAM ${color } $memperc%
${offset 300}${color light grey}${memgraph mem 13,100}
--- EOF

*Important, anything below TEXT will display, even comments starting with a #. Move all your comments or currently unused lines ABOVE the TEXT line! From here on out I'll just be showing from TEXT down, everything above is unchanged but present. The --- EOF is the first line that doesn't exist in my .conkyrc. Let's go ahead and open a console and launch conky again.

OK when we realize that it's not what we want, we'll need to Ctrl+z in our console to kill conky when it's running in the desktop instead of a window, then type exit a few times to close out the terminal. What I currently see in my screen is my stats overlapping on my screen and the bottom bar is cutoff. Next I'll try a little spacing to the file, remember whatever is below TEXT goes on the screen:
${offset 300}${color }CPU ${color } $cpu%
${offset 300}${color light grey}${cpugraph 13,100}

${offset 300}${color }RAM ${color } $memperc%
${offset 300}${color light grey}${memgraph mem 13,100}


---EOF

OK that's much better, but just a fraction of what I normally display on my desktop. What you can do with conky will blow your mind, the best way to tweak it out is to search for conky screenshots you like, then look at the config files. An invaluable resource is the conky variables webpage, notice the new link at the top of the blog. Let me kick this up one more notch with my actual config file:
TEXT
${offset 300}${time %l:%M %p} ${alignr}${time %A - %b %e, %Y}
${offset 300}${hr}

${offset 300}CPU @ ${freq}Mhz ${alignr}$cpu%
${offset 300}${cpugraph 20,200}

${offset 300}RAM @ ${memmax} ${alignr}$memperc%
${offset 300}${memgraph 20,200}

${offset 300}${alignc}Eth0 Up ${alignr}Down
${offset 300}${upspeedgraph eth0 20,95} ${alignr}${downspeedgraph eth0 20,95}

${offset 300}${alignc}Eth2 Up ${alignr}Down
${offset 300}${upspeedgraph eth2 20,95} ${alignr}${downspeedgraph eth2 20,95}

${offset 300}${hr}
${offset 300}TOP CPU ${alignr}PID CPU %
${offset 300}${top name 1} ${alignr}${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1}
${offset 300}${top name 2} ${alignr}${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2}
${offset 300}${top name 3} ${alignr}${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3}
${offset 300}${top name 4} ${alignr}${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4}
${offset 300}${top name 5} ${alignr}${top pid 5} ${top cpu 5}

${offset 300}${hr}
${offset 300}TOP MEM ${alignr}PID MEM %
${offset 300}${top_mem name 1} ${alignr}${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${offset 300}${top_mem name 2} ${alignr}${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${offset 300}${top_mem name 3} ${alignr}${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem mem 3}
${offset 300}${top_mem name 4} ${alignr}${top_mem pid 4} ${top_mem mem 4}
${offset 300}${top_mem name 5} ${alignr}${top_mem pid 5} ${top_mem mem 5}

${offset 300}${hr}
${offset 300}Eth0 IP Add ${alignr}${addr eth0}
${offset 300}Eth2 IP Add ${alignr}${addr eth2}
${offset 300}Kernel Ver${alignr}${kernel}
${offset 300}AC State ${alignr}${acpiacadapter}
${offset 300}Battery ${alignr}${battery_percent BAT0}%
${offset 300}Temp ${alignr}${acpitemp}


---EOF

Now relaunch conky. Yeah, that's what I like to see! Now I'll tweak the width of my toolbar to fit how I like and remove the clock from the bar and just run it on conky. Open up .fluxbox/init and look for the line "session.screen0.toolbar.tools:" and see what it says. I'll copy that line and paste one line below, then remark out the original with a #. Now I'm going to make my new one look like this:
session.screen0.toolbar.tools: workspacename, prevworkspace, nextworkspace, iconbar

Because that's all I need. Keep whatever you like, add some more, take other stuff off, do what you like. OK, wouldn't it be neat if we could get this to start everytime we go into fluxbox? Here's the answer for that, open up that startup file inside .fluxbox and add a conky kicker above your exec fluxbox line like this:
exec conky &
exec /usr/bin/fluxbox

Once you've got that saved exit fluxbox and logout, then log back in. When fluxbox restarts you should have conky up and running in the corner!