Unofficial

SysMon

SysMon: see what your QNAP is doing

Processes, disks, network and sensors in a terminal.

SysMon adds the programs that show what the NAS is doing right now: htop, btop, atop, Glances, iotop, iftop, ncdu, mtr and more, all reachable from an SSH login.

Every program is compiled from source with Bucket & Code Server IDE. Install the package as it is, or change its recipe list and build your own.

Install from App Center Build it yourself

In App Center: (example) SysMon · Intel and AMD (x86_64) · QTS 6.0 or QuTS hero 6.0 or newer · freeware

SSH login on the NAS

command -v hdparm

/usr/app/SysMon/first/hdparm

hdparm -V

hdparm v9.65

iostat -V | head -1

sysstat version 12.8.0

iperf3 --version | head -1

iperf 3.21 (cJSON 1.7.15)

nmap --version | head -1

Nmap version 7.991 ( https://nmap.org )

btop --version

btop version: 1.3.2

What is inside

The recipe list names these programs, and the build adds the libraries they need.

Processes, processor and memory

htop
the interactive process list
btop
processor, memory, disks, network and processes on one screen
atop
processes with long-term logging, and atopsar
glances
a system monitor in Python
procps
ps, top, free, vmstat, watch, pgrep, pkill, pmap, slabtop
sysstat
iostat, mpstat, pidstat, sar
psmisc
pstree, fuser, killall, prtstat
nmon
Nigel's performance monitor

Disks and files

iotop
disk use per process and thread
ncdu
what fills a folder, sorted by size
lsof
open files and the processes that hold them
progress
how far cp, mv, dd and tar have got
pv
progress, rate and time left of data through a pipe
smartmontools
smartctl and smartd for S.M.A.R.T. data
hdparm
reads and sets ATA/SATA disk parameters, measures read speed
sdparm
reads and changes the mode pages of SCSI and SATA disks
nvme
nvme-cli: NVMe drive information, SMART and error logs
ioping
disk latency request by request, like ping
fio
flexible I/O tester
duf
disk use of mounted file systems as a table

Network

iftop
bandwidth per connection
nload
incoming and outgoing traffic as graphs
nethogs
bandwidth per process
bmon
bandwidth monitor
vnstat
a traffic log per interface, with the vnstatd daemon
mtr
traceroute and ping in one, hop by hop
iptraf-ng
IP traffic and LAN statistics in a text interface
tcpdump
captures and decodes packets
ethtool
shows and changes network interface settings
iperf3
measures network throughput
nmap
network discovery and port scanning, with ncat and nping
iproute2
ip, ss and tc: addresses, routes and sockets
fping
pings many hosts at once
arp-scan
finds the hosts of the local network by ARP
traceroute
shows the routers on the way to a host

Hardware and system calls

sensors
lm-sensors: temperatures, fan speeds and voltages
dmidecode
the firmware's tables: board, BIOS, memory modules
lspci
PCI devices with their names
lsusb
USB buses and devices with their names
ipmitool
talks to a server's BMC over the network
strace
the system calls and signals of a program
tmux
panes for the project's dashboard

How it looks

Real screens from a QNAP NAS with the package from App Center.

btop in a terminal with panels for CPU, memory, disks, network and processes
btop on a NAS: processor, memory, disks, network and the process list at once.
htop: processor and memory bars over a list of processes
htop with one bar for each processor core over the process list.

Who it helps

The NAS feels slow

btop and htop show which process takes the processor and the memory. iotop shows which one keeps the disks busy.

A volume fills up

ncdu walks a folder and sorts what is in it by size, so you can see what took the space.

You want to see the traffic

iftop, nload and NetHogs show traffic by connection, by interface and by process. mtr follows a route hop by hop.

Install it

  1. Add this site's repository to App Center once: the three steps.
  2. In the repository's list find (example) SysMon and press Install.
  3. Turn on SSH in Control Panel › Network & File Services › Telnet / SSH.

Start it

SysMon has no window of its own: you run it from a terminal. Sign in over SSH as admin and call a program by its name.

ssh admin@192.0.2.10     # your NAS's address
htop                     # processes
btop                     # everything on one screen
ncdu /share/Public       # what fills this folder

Good to know

  • In a shell you type into, the package's hdparm, iostat, lspci and free run before QTS's copies, which do not do what people use them for: hdparm -I, iostat -m, device names in lspci and free -h.
  • iotop, iftop, nethogs, iptraf-ng, tcpdump, mtr and smartctl read what only root may read. An admin login on the NAS can run them.
  • sensors lists only the chips a loaded kernel driver exposes, for example coretemp with the processor temperatures of Intel models.
  • vnStat logs traffic only while its daemon runs. vnstatd -d starts it, and it stops when the NAS restarts.
  • iotop's SWAPIN and IO% columns stay empty until you turn on the kernel's delay accounting: echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/task_delayacct. That lasts until the NAS restarts.
  • Other names QTS has stay QTS's, such as top, ps, lsof, pv and ethtool. The package's copy runs by its full path, such as /usr/app/SysMon/bin/top.
  • Scripts, cron and a command given straight to ssh keep QTS's commands.
  • On a QNAP NAS nc is QNAP's Notification Center tool. Use ncat.
  • ipmitool talks to a server's BMC over the network, and most NAS models have no BMC of their own.

Change it and build it again, whenever you want

SysMon is an example from Bucket & Code Server IDE, our free development environment for QNAP. It compiles each program from source on your own NAS and packs the result as a QPKG.

From the panel

  1. In Bucket & Code open Apps, then the Examples tab. Add Ubuntu 24.04 builder (full) if you have no builder environment yet.
  2. Press Use this example on SysMon (geek set 2). The app appears with its recipes, and nothing is built yet.
  3. Press Build, then Activate. Export makes a QPKG once a QDK toolchain is installed.

From a terminal

The Editor project SysMon holds the same list in recipes.txt. Take a line out or add a recipe from the library, then run this in the Editor's terminal:

make app        # makes the app from recipes.txt
make build      # builds it and follows the job
make activate   # /usr/app/SysMon now points to the build
make qpkg       # exports a QPKG (needs a QDK toolchain)

The project also has a dashboard: make dashboard shows btop, iotop, iftop and nload in four tmux panes. It runs after make activate.

The New app page of Bucket & Code's App Builder See it done in Bucket & Code Compile Any App You Need Without Linux Skills: Build QPKG & Deploy Easily (Freeware) 8 min on YouTube

Related pages