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I'm looking for a tool that lets me build a monitoring dashboard that renders in a linux terminal. The monitoring that I'm interested in is tailing log files and summary queries on a database. Ideally, I'd have the terminal divided into quarters: two that tail log files, and two that have pre-formatted table text. I already can get the same effect by opening 4 separate terminal windows, manually arranging them, and then running watch some_command... in each one. This solution is... ugly, at best. And it doesn't scale very well when I have 4 or 5 servers that all need to be monitored in the same way. I'm wondering if there doesn't already exist some other way of doing this.

I've tried hubble, though I am finding that it is mostly suited to displaying numeric data and small snippets of text. It doesn't seem to handle log files or pre-formatted text tables very well.

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  • Actually with Tmux I have a key-binding like this: bind-key S set-window-option synchronize-panes \; display-message 'Toggled synchronize-panes' which allows me to toggle the synchronize-panes option with Prefix+S (that is uppercase S, i.e. Prefix+Shift+s) which allows one to send the same key presses to every pane in the current window. Always found it highly useful. May not scale well, but with Tmux you can also source a configuration file tailored to your needs, setting up windows and panes the way you like. Advantage over screen: config files are readable ;)
    – 0xC0000022L
    Oct 27, 2019 at 13:40

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tmux + config mgmt is definitely a good option if you already have the CLI tools you need to display what you want (tail, grep, awk, gplot, etc.)

That said, blessed contrib is an interesting project that builds a terminal dashboard and provides some interesting data presentation options. A quick search on github will probably turn-up similar projects that might also be worth checking out.

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tmux and teamocil let you split a terminal window into panes and run commands in each pane.

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  • Interesting, I'll have a look at them. The last time I tried running screen in docker (~90% of this type of monitoring activity occurs in a docker container) it got a little wonky. Maybe tmux works better with docker. It would still be nice to be able to have a single tool that run run all the monitors with a single command, do you know if tmux+teamocil are scriptable?
    – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner
    Nov 13, 2015 at 18:47
  • teamocil configures your pane and window layout, and the initial commands to run. So your workflow is: launch tmux, run teamocil <some_name>
    – glenn jackman
    Nov 13, 2015 at 19:25

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