Monitoring your system health with HTOP (big.LITTLE)

[@lex]

Just In case anyone is interested I have pushed HTOP 2.2.1 to github, so it is possible to monitor big.LITTLE cores in real-time.

You can view the big.LITTLE in action, Vcore, Cpu thermal throttling and Cpu frequency for each big or LITTLE core.

 

HTOP is a nice console graphical tool for system-monitor, process-viewer and process-manager.

DEB package and source code in case you want to extend or fix things.

Be aware the process list and task can be very intrusive if you want to monitor many things at once.

It has been tested on NanoPi M4 (thanks to FriendlyElec for the samples) but should work on any SBC just adjust the Vcore path for different kernel version.

 

https://github.com/avafinger/htop-2.1.1_enhanced-version

 

[Igor]

1 hour ago, @lex said:

Just In case anyone is interested I have pushed HTOP 2.2.1 to github

 

... and I have build it and pushed to Armbian stable repository (Stretch, Xenial and Bionic; armhf+arm64). First boot scripts also creates CPUfreq config based on CPU count. More can be added if there is an interest ... Package can be installed via apt update and upgrade while auto config feature will work only on self made images.

[@lex]

big.LITTLE has a policy for each cluster so I pushed some changes to display CPU Temp, CPU Freq, and CPU V-core for each cluster instead of CPU Freq for each CPU.

Added a branch: rk3399 so it does not break things, you may need to review the boot script if one would like to know CPU temp for big and for LITTLE cores.

 

[SenorSmartyPants]

I had cpufreq and core temp displayed on my Rock Pi4 when I first installed. But have some apt updates (and kernel updates) the freq and temp are no longer displayed. 

 

How can I check to make sure that I am still running the armbian supplied htop, and not the general debian one? Could this have been messed up with a kernel update?

 

I've never had this info on my banana pi.

[Igor]

14 hours ago, SenorSmartyPants said:

Could this have been messed up with a kernel update?

No. Do:

apt purge htop
and 

apt install htop

and see if it is downloading from apt.armbian.com

[SenorSmartyPants]

On 2/25/2019 at 1:32 AM, Igor said:

No. Do:

apt purge htop
and 

apt install htop

and see if it is downloading from apt.armbian.com

 

When I tried to purge htop, it failed

 

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package htop

 

So I ran apt update to see if that would fix the above error.  Only one armbian source listed, does this look right?

 

Hit:5 https://download.docker.com/linux/debian stretch InRelease
Ign:1 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease
Hit:3 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates InRelease
Get:2 http://security-cdn.debian.org stretch/updates InRelease [94.3 kB]
Hit:7 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports InRelease
Hit:8 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian testing InRelease
Get:4 http://security-cdn.debian.org testing/updates InRelease [38.3 kB]
Hit:6 https://beta.armbian.com stretch InRelease
Hit:9 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian testing-updates InRelease
Hit:10 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian stretch Release

 

[Igor]

8 hours ago, SenorSmartyPants said:

does this look right?

 

Yes, but you are using beta.armbian.com repository which is automated builds for testing and development. If it doesn't work there, not a problem.

[guidol]

I did try to compile, but got some missing dependencies....

apt-installed libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev debhelper

but my debhelper doenst seem to be the right version (  debhelper (>= 11) )

dpkg -l|grep debhelper
debhelper   10.2.5  all  helper programs for debian/rules

uname -a
Linux t95k-pro 5.0.2-aml-s912 #5.77 SMP PREEMPT Mon Mar 18 15:02:39 MSK 2019 aarch64 GNU/Linux

How do I get >= v11?
Installation of the precompiled .deb was OK

dpkg -i htop_2.1.1-3_arm64.deb
(Lese Datenbank ... 59412 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von htop_2.1.1-3_arm64.deb ...
Entpacken von htop (2.1.1-3) über (2.1.1-3) ...
htop (2.1.1-3) wird eingerichtet ...
Trigger für mime-support (3.60) werden verarbeitet ...
Trigger für man-db (2.7.6.1-2) werden verarbeitet ...

 

 

[SenorSmartyPants]

10 hours ago, Igor said:

 

Yes, but you are using beta.armbian.com repository which is automated builds for testing and development. If it doesn't work there, not a problem.

 

But should htop be found with my repos? Becuase it currently isn't.

How do I switch to non beta armbian repos?

[Igor]

2 hours ago, SenorSmartyPants said:

But should htop be found with my repos? Becuase it currently isn't.

 

No. Beta repository and images labelled as WIP/testings are for developers and testings. End user questions like such shell be ignored since they are irrelevant for the development. Images are not supported - I hope you do understand that. 

 

Normally you can change repository in armbian-config but in this case it will break down since there are no stable builds for Rockpi-4.

[Igor]

Anyone have time to make a patch of changes between stock and @@lex made? I have mine here. This is the only cosmetical problem on Debian Buster. Htop needs to be remade, currently we ship Buster with unmodified htop. /me too busy atm

[macerg]

Hello, I've noticed that with the last updates, this cpu frequency has stopped showing.

Edit: works if do sudo htop

Edited October 20, 2020 by macerg
clarification.

[Werner]

1 hour ago, macerg said:

Hello, I've noticed that with the last updates, this cpu frequency has stopped showing.

Edit: works if do sudo htop

It is not uncommon that root privileges are needed to show such things. It depends on the way the clock is read from the system which differs from chip to chip. Sometimes it works without elevation

[macerg]

All I'm saying is that it worked without root privileges until recently. No worries, not a biggie, obviously.

[Igor]

On 10/20/2020 at 2:27 PM, macerg said:

Hello, I've noticed that with the last updates, this cpu frequency has stopped showing.

Edit: works if do sudo htop

Known problem, registered https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-482 but haven't got chance to look into it. Can you help with providing more data? Which was last working version, which OS (armbianmonitor -u) ... 

[macerg]

Working on it.

Edited October 23, 2020 by macerg

[Igor]

1 hour ago, macerg said:

armbianmonitor output

Is URL to a pastebin service, not some unaligned text that noone will be reading. Please fix that. Its not useful.

[Eric Poscher-Mika]

Not sure where to post an issue.
I found some pretty ugly stuff going on with htop and nm-dispatcher.
The log shows:

Nov 27 20:33:07 localhost nm-dispatcher[1812]:  
Nov 27 20:33:07 localhost nm-dispatcher[1812]: sed: can't read /nonexistent/.config/htop/htoprc: No such file or dire
ctory
Nov 27 20:33:07 localhost nm-dispatcher[1812]: sed: can't read /nonexistent/.config/htop/htoprc: No such file or dire
ctory

 

.. and the same for all other users who have never used htop before.

 

This is caused by the following script:  /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/80-update-htop-and-offload-tx

WTF is this script writing into all the users Home directory? This is a really bad practice and I havent seen such a thing in 20 years of debian&ubuntu usage.

 

[Igor]

41 minutes ago, Eric Poscher-Mika said:

This is caused by the following script:  /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/80-update-htop-and-offload-tx

 

It is pretty obvious what those scripts do, right? We will be happy if you deliver a better solution and fix problems that seems important to you.

 

52 minutes ago, Eric Poscher-Mika said:

WTF is this script writing into all the users Home directory?

WTF is .bash_history in my home directory?

[Werner]

9 hours ago, Eric Poscher-Mika said:

in 20 years of debian&ubuntu usage.

Since you have a lot of experience your help to improve things is highly appreciated Send PR here:

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/packages/bsp/common/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/80-update-htop-and-offload-tx

[Eric Poscher-Mika]

Again, this script causes error messages.

 

Feb 16 04:19:59 helio nm-dispatcher[2249]: cp: cannot create regular file '/nonexistent/.config/htop/htoprc': No such file or directory

I suggest you fix stuff for htop in htop and not write into all users config files like a script kidie.

 

meanwhile fix this bug with 

rm /etc/networkd-dispatcher/80-update-htop-and-offload-tx

[Eric Poscher-Mika]

Hi @Werner I made a proposal that solves the confusion and troubles.