Saturday, October 5, 2013

Ceni Network Interfaces

The Debian Series - Part VIII

Ceni is a CLI application, and must be run as root. It is a relatively basic application, as the name implies, which stands for Configure Etc Network Interfaces, it allows you to configure /etc/network/interfaces through a command-line interface.(linuxbbq wiki)

Ceni is a Curses user interface for configuring network interfaces with ifupdown. Ceni can manage basic network interface ifupdown configuration stanzas for ethernet and wireless devices.
(siduction wiki)

Why need ceni?
its light, and just in case something goes wrong with xorg and leaves you only CLI, you still can connect to wireless network without editing /etc/network/interfaces manually. Or maybe you just want to go into the CLI session without going into the x-session.

download ceni at siduction repos (Oct-2013):

$ wget -c http://packages.siduction.org/base/pool/main/c/ceni/ceni_2.38_all.deb

install the deb files:

$ sudo dpkg -i ceni_2.38_all.deb
 
the installation will generate some error because of the dependencies problem. To fix it:

$ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libcurses-perl libcurses-ui-perl libexpect-perl libio-pty-perl
  libio-stty-perl libterm-readkey-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libcurses-perl libcurses-ui-perl libexpect-perl libio-pty-perl
  libio-stty-perl libterm-readkey-perl
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 58 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 484 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,696 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


to start ceni just type

$ sudo ceni


Ceni detects that Network-Manager is running.
Configuring Ceni with usb-tethering.

Accept the configuration
 And done.
 Test the connection.
If you'd like to switch to Network-Manager again, just run Ceni and select use Network-Manager as seen below:



For further configuration of ceni, refer to the Siduction Manual here.



Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Conky

The Debian Series - Part VII

$ man conky  :

Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on torsmo. SInce its inception, Conky has changed significantly. Conky can display just about anything, either on your root desktop or in its own window. Not only does Conky have many built-in objects, it can also display just about any piece of information by using scripts and other external programs.

Conky has more than 250 built in objects, including support for a plethora of OS stats (uname, uptime, CPU usage, mem usage, disk usage, "top" like process stats, and network monitoring, just to name a few), built in IMAP and POP3 support, built in support for many popular music players (MPD, XMMS2, BMPx, Audacious), and much much more. Conky can display this info either as text, or using simple progress bars and graph widgets, with different font and colours.

there are already many articles about conky and the conky - setup over the internet.

to install conky we simply run:

$ sudo apt-get install conky

then edit the .conkyrc file under the /home/username directory.

$ nano .conkyrc

for the initial setup you might want to copy this into your .conkyrc files since the default setup is pretty ugly. Then you might want to edit it following your need and taste.

# conkyrc files
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 200
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color 656667
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 48
gap_y 12
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}SYSTEM ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
File System: $alignr${fs_type}
Battery:$alignr ${battery_percent BAT1}% ${battery_bar BAT1} $batterry_bar
$alignr ${battery_time BAT1}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}PROCESSORS ${hr 2}
#${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu1}
CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
CPU2: ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}MEMORY ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}RAM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}DISKS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
SWAP $alignc ${swap} / ${swapmax} $alignr ${swapperc}%
${swapbar}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}TOP PROCESSES ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top mem 1} %
${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
$font${top_mem name 5}${alignr}${top mem 5} %

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}NETWORK ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}IP address: $alignr ${addr eth0}
ESSID: $alignr ${wireless_essid eth0}
Connection quality: $alignr ${wireless_link_qual_perc eth0}%
${downspeedgraph eth0}
DLS:${downspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totaldown eth0}
${upspeedgraph eth0}
ULS:${upspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totalup eth0}
# end of files

to make sure conky is running in every session, we put it in autostart.sh

$ nano .config/openbox/autostart.sh

add:

(sleep 2s && conky) &

and save.

This is the default conky theme of LinuxBBQ spins with a little of modifications. :)