Enhance your Linux system management
Nick Peers takes a deep dive into a tool that aims to be a one-stop shop for all your system maintenance and monitoring needs.
System monitoring tools are priceless. They provide an at-a-glance view of your PC’s health and performance, usually in the form of graphs and lists, spanning such areas as CPU, memory network and hard disk usage on the hardware side, and running processes and services on the software side.
Ubuntu offers its own tool in the form of System Monitor, which you can open via the Launcher’s search tool. This provides three simple views: Processes, Resources and File Systems. The most graphical of these is Resources, with a mixture of line graphs and pie charts revealing CPU, memory (including swap), and network activity. The File Systems tab provides an at-aglance view of all your mounted drives along with their capacity, file system type and available free space. The Processes tab is the most powerful of the three. Not only can you monitor all running processes, but you can also access details about each, plus view processes in relation to each other using a hierarchical tree, which helps to trace child processes to their parents.
In addition, you’re able to control processes from here too: right-click a process to reveal options to stop, continue, end or even kill it. It’s also possible to change a process’s priority. By default, most processes are given equal priority, but if one starts slowing your system down you can try and rein it in without killing it by rightclicking it in System Monitor, then choosing either Low or Very Low from the Change Priority sub-menu.
System Monitor on steroids
System Monitor is a useful tool, but it does lack a few key features. There’s no handy overview of your system as provided by the About section in Settings, for example, and there’s no way to monitor or manage services. If you’re in the market for a more powerful alternative, the good news is that it exists in the form of Stacer (https:// oguzhaninan.github.io/Stacer-Web).
Stacer takes pretty much everything from System Monitor along with elements of other tools – both graphical and command-line – to provide you with a one-stop shop for most of your system management and monitoring needs. For example, it pairs the information provided by System Monitor’s Resources and File Systems tabs with the About section of Settings to detail key stats such as hostname, distribution, Kernel release and CPU model.
It also throws in a host of useful – and related – tools, from tools for managing startup programs and services to a clean-up utility and even a selection of tools for tweaking the Gnome desktop.
Sadly, development has stalled on Stacer over the past couple of years, but it still works perfectly in Ubuntu and the lack of development does mean the latest build (1.1.0) can be installed directly through Ubuntu Software via snap in Ubuntu 20.04 or later.
The homepage also lists instructions for installing Stacer via its own repo, but be warned: it only contains files for older Ubuntu releases, including 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS. If you don’t want to use snap or the repo, click Other Packages beneath these instructions to
download the latest release as an rpm, deb or portable AppImage package via Github. Experienced users can also compile the software themselves.
Take the tour
Once installed, launch Stacer via the Launcher. It’ll open its own window, and place itself in the menu bar. When you close this window you’ll be given the option of leaving it running in the background or quitting completely. If you leave it running, the menu bar icon provides convenient shortcuts to the various parts of the program, and the obligatory quit option.
The main Stacer window opens to reveal its information dashboard, outlined in detail in the annotation opposite. Navigating between Stacer’s many sections is done using the icons on the left of the screen. Related to the Dashboard view is the Resources section – click the graph icon to switch to it.
Here you’ll see a selection of historic line graphs covering CPU usage, CPU Load Averages, Disk Read Write, Memory (covering both physical RAM and swap usage) and Network (upload and download). These update in real-time and enable you to view the past 60 seconds of activity for each. Next to each title you’ll see a button inviting you to expand the view. Click this and the graph will expand to fill the Stacer window to provide a more detailed view (click the button again to collapse the view back to the original summary screen).
If you scroll down below this section you’ll see a File System chart, which provides a visual look at disk usage using a pie chart. By default, it provides an overview of all mounted drives. Roll your mouse over a segment to see which drive it’s referring to, and what that drive’s total capacity is (the percentage figure in brackets reveals how much space is filled with files).
Above this you’ll see two drop-down menus. Device enables you to focus the view on a specific mounted device under /dev as well as the tmpfs device that resides on a swap file or within physical memory. This is primarily of use for examining drives that have been partitioned. The second dropdown – File System – makes it possible to filter your device selection by vfat, fuseblk (NTFS), squashfs, ext4 or tmpfs. It’ll be of interest to more advanced users wanting to verify file resources are set up and being handled correctly.
Manage startup items
When you install certain programs, they’ll configure themselves to start automatically when you log into your system. Often, tell-tale signs can be found in the menu bar where an icon will appear. You can configure
Stacer to start automatically when you log in too, via its Settings section. Simply flick the Autostart Stacer switch to On.
Stacer’s Startup Apps section enables you to view and edit those startup items that reside inside your own home folder under ~/.config/autostart. To switch to Startup Apps, click the rocket icon beneath the dashboard icon. Next to each entry you’ll see two buttons and a switch. Use the switch to temporarily disable an item from startup (a good precautionary idea if you’re looking to trim your startup times), and the X button to remove its startup entry completely.
If you’d like to view a startup item in detail, or edit it, click the pencil button. You can rename the entry, add a comment and – crucially – view and amend the startup command itself. Click Save when you’re done, and Stacer will update the appropriate script for you.
You can also manually add startup items too – just click ‘Add Startup App’ to bring up a blank window for you to populate with the aforementioned details.
Clean your drive
The broom button leads you to Stacer’s System Cleaner. This is split into five sections: package caches, crash reports, application logs, application caches and the trash. The step-by-step guide (overleaf) reveals how it works and what you’ll find in each section.
Immediately below System Cleaner is Stacer’s Search tool. It’s described as a ‘BETA version’, and at first glance looks powerful, but sadly we couldn’t get it to return any results on our Ubuntu 20.04 machine. If you’re able to get it to work, you first start by clicking the Browse… button to select a drive or directory that you wish to search. Type your search terms into the box. Click the All drop-down menu only if you wish to restrict
your search to a file, folder or symbolic link, and finally click the Search button.
If the search works, you can use the column headers to sort your results by path, size, user or creation time (rather than by name) if you wish. Or, if you’re looking for a more advanced search tool, click Advanced Search to reveal additional options, including searching as the root user and/or performing a RegEx search. The ‘Case Insensitive’ box is worth ticking to remove the need to enter your search terms using the correct case.
Other options include filtering results according to when the file was last accessed, the size of the file, and also who owns the file. You can also restrict results by permissions (readable, writeable and/or executable).
If the file search tool doesn’t work for you, check out the box on FSearch (opposite) for an alternative tool that offers similar features to Stacer.
Control system services
Services are low-level processes that run quietly in the background. Many are linked to your Linux installation, while others are added by third-party tools such as servers. Stacer provides a GUI for monitoring both types under the collective banner of ‘System Services’.
After selecting Services you’ll see a scrollable list of services ordered alphabetically. You’ll see the service filename and its more friendly descriptive name, plus a pair of switches. The first determines whether that service runs automatically at startup, while the second reveals whether it’s currently running or not.
Both switches make it easy to enable/disable and start/stop services simply by flicking the appropriate switch. You can also filter the views by startup status or running status.
Beneath Services lies Stacer’s Processes tool. This works in a similar, albeit more limited way, to System Monitor’s Processes tab. You can view all running processes, and sort the list a number of ways to bring memory or CPU-intensive processes to the fore. You can also search the list for a specific process by name and end selected processes. However, you can’t alter a process’s priority or simply pause it.
Two additional options worth mentioning: first, you can alter how often the process list is refreshed using the slider beneath the list. And second, by default, only processes running under your username are listed – tick All Processes to view all processes instead. Again, this is less flexible than System Monitor, which enables you to not only filter by active processes, but also show the list of processes as a tree, with child processes (those created by a ‘parent’ process as part of its operation) listed as ‘dependencies’ beneath the parent.
Remove packages
Stacer also ships with an Uninstaller tool, which provides you with a list of both packages and snap packages. It gives you a handy list of what’s installed on your system, while a search box means you can quickly locate the package you’re looking for.
Additionally, by ticking one or more entries you can install those packages with a single click of ‘Uninstall Selected’. While it has the potential to save time over removing applications through apt uninstall or the Software Centre, you also run the risk of inadvertently removing a critical package from your system, so if in doubt leave well alone.
Beneath this is Resources, the series of historical graphs we covered earlier, and below that is Helpers. This is firmly aimed at the likes of developers and network system admins, and enables you to manage your hosts file. The Host Manage button doesn’t work,
but click New Host to add a new entry. You’ll need to supply an IP address, fully qualified domain name and optional aliases if required, or right-click an existing entry to edit or delete it. When you’re done, click Save Changes and enter your user password.
Manage repositories
You can – of course – manage software repositories via the Software & Updates tool, but Stacer offers virtually the same functionality without having to leave the program. Click the box button to access APT Repository Manager where a list of repos will be shown to you – use the Search tool to filter the list if you know what you’re looking for.
You’ll see each repo has a switch for enabling or disabling it (the equivalent of ticking or unticking the box under Software & Updates), but you can also permanently delete unwanted entries from here, make changes to existing repos via the Edit button, and add new repos from scratch via Add Repository.
Tweak Gnome
The final tool offered by Stacer is Gnome Settings. Here, you’ll find useful tweaks that control various aspects of your Gnome desktop. It’s no substitute for Gnome Tweaks, but it contains a handy subset of features, split into two sections.
The first is Window Manager, where you can configure hardware acceleration to prioritise performance over text quality (choose between Fast, Good and Best). You can also enable the Workspace switcher, then configure how many horizontal and vertical workspaces you want.
You’ve also got controls over focus behaviour – enable or disable the raise-on-click function, plus select a focus mode. You can also determine what happens to titlebars when you click them with left, right or – if applicable – middle mouse buttons.
Finally, the Appearance tab enables you to show and hide key icons from the desktop, set how the
background image behaves (zoom, centred, wallpapered, stretched and so on) on your desktop and login screen. And last, but not least, you’re able to toggle the screen keyboard and reader tools on and off from here too.
Configure Stacer
Beneath the Gnome Settings icon is Stacer’s own Preferences button. Click this and you’ll see where to configure Stacer to automatically start when you log on (as reported earlier). You can also remove (or restore) the quit confirmation dialog, and set alert messages should CPU or memory usage exceed a specific percentage, or free disk space fall below a certain percentage. Finally, you can choose a different default volume to your system drive, and instruct Stacer to open to a different section other than its dashboard.
The final icon invites you to contact the author and provide feedback on Stacer. Given that development has slowed to a crawl lately, you might prefer to reach out via the program’s Github page instead (see https:// github.com/oguzhaninan/Stacer).