System monitoring

A simple service that monitors and collects information on system resource such as battery, temperature, memory, CPU, and network usage. The service can be used as backend for applications that need to consult system status.

Sysmond monitor ressource available on the system via the user space sysfs interface.

The service logs all system information to application using a classic file-based interface, it can be configured to log system information to:

• Regular text file (such as log file)
• Name pipe (FIFO), the name pipe file should be previously created by application
• STDOUT
• UNIX socket domain, as with name pipe, the socket file must be previously created by application

Additionally, if configured correctly, the service can monitor the system battery and automatically shutdown the system when the battery is below a configured threshold

Build and install

The build process is done using autotool

libtoolize
aclocal
autoconf
automake --add-missing
# build
make
#install
make install

Configuration

The default configuration file can be found in /etc/sysmond.conf. Specific configuration file can be passed to the service using the -f option.

sysmond -f /path/to/your/sysmond.conf

Battery monitoring configuration

The battery monitoring feature is helpful for battery-powered systems such as robotic systems. On these systems, battery voltage reading is performed with the help of an ADC sensor (such as ADS1115). As the service communicate with the system hardware via the sysfs interface, in order to provide input to sysmond, these ADCs sensor should accessible in user space via this interface. Usually, this is handled by the device dirver.

For example, an ADS1115 linux driver will expose its ADC channel inputs in user space at /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/device/*, if the battery is connected to the chanel 3 of the ADC sensor, the battery voltage can be easily read with a simple cat command:

cat sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/device/in3_input
# value in mV, example 4.1V
4120 

This kind of file need to be passed to sysmond configuration. The following configuration availabe

# Max usable battery voltage
battery_max_voltage = 12600

# Min usable battery votage
battery_min_voltage = 10000

# Below this voltage, the battery is unusable and is damaged
battery_cutoff_votalge = 9000

# if voltage divider is used, the R1+R2/ R2 ratio shoud be set to `battery_divide_ratio`, otherwise `1.0`
battery_divide_ratio = 3.36

# Battery input file. If this configuration is empty, the battery monitoring feature is disabled
battery_input = /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/in3_input

# When battery is low the system will be shutdown after n count down
power_off_count_down = 10

# the system will bet shutdown if the battery voltage percent is below this value after `power_off_count_down` times
power_off_percent = 3

Based on these configuration, sysmond can approximate the battery volage percent, it is also able to protect the battery by powering off the system when the batery percent bellow the configured value.

CPU, memory and storage usage configuration

# number of cpu cores to monitor, this value shoud be equal or less than the actual number of CPU cores in the system
# CPU informations are fetched from /proc/stat
cpu_core_number = 4

# memory informations are automatically fetch from /proc/meminfo, no configuration needed

# The mount point of the storage should be monitored
disk_mount_point = /

Temperature configuration

# System temperature informations can be found in /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/*
# CPU temperature
cpu_temperature_input=/sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone1/temp

# GPU temperature
gpu_temperature_input=/sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone2/temp

Network monitoring configuration

# List of network interface to monitor
network_interfaces = wlan0,eth0

Other configurations

# Sampling period in ms, example: 2Hz (2 samples per second) should be
sample_period = 500

# Output system info to file
# The output file may be: stdout, a regular file or name pipe, or a unix domain socket

# To print JSON data records to stdout use
data_file_out = stdout

# To send data via unix domain socket use
data_file_out = sock:/path/to/socket/file

# regular file or name pipe
data_file_out = /var/sysmond.log

Output data format

System informations are outputed in JSON format, example:

{
	"stamp_sec": 1612363252,
	"stamp_usec": 890264,
	"battery": 0.000,
	"battery_percent": 0.000,
	"battery_max_voltage": 12600,
	"battery_min_voltage": 10000,
	"cpu_temp": 52582,
	"gpu_temp": 0,
	"cpu_usages": [1.500, 2.000, 0.000, 2.000, 2.000],
	"mem_total": 1891540,
	"mem_free": 62780,
	"mem_used": 729076,
	"mem_buff_cache": 1099684,
	"mem_available": 1360044,
	"mem_swap_total": 0,
	"mem_swap_free": 0,
	"disk_total": 877448515584,
	"disk_free": 876156772352,
	"net": [{
		"name": "eth0",
		"rx": 1529461109,
		"tx": 1704797921,
		"rx_rate": 132.000,
		"tx_rate": 1244.000
	}]
}

Note:

• Battery is in mV
• Temperature in is: Celsius*1000
• Memory in KB
• Disk is in: bytes
• Network rate Kb/s