Only show active I/O

[PythonNut]

I have a lot of disks (9) and network adapters (4). I don't use most of them often, however, and I feel like they are consuming space that could be given to temperatures, mounts, and other important stuff. Would an option to hide inactive I/O be desirable or even useful?

Thanks,
PythonNut

[nicolargo]

The only way to manage this is to add a new option in the configuration file (glances.conf) allowing users to hide disks (in the IO disk panel) and netwok interfaces (in the Network panel).

To do this, we need to:

• add [iodisk] and [network] sections
• add the hide tag inside the sections

For example:

[iodisk]
hide=sda2,sda5

[network]
hide=lo,eth1

Change request to be scheduled in the next release.

Any comments will be welcome.

[PythonNut]

Could it be done dynamically? Simply don't show lines for disks with [0 in, 0 out]. Same for network. If those disks became active, they would be shown. This could be an option, default, or a command-line flag (or a combination).

Having an option to disable a disk or net interface entirely would be cool too. By ignoring them, we can save on CPU cycles.

[nicolargo]

Main issue with the "dynamic way" is that most of the time IO disk and network are [0 in, 0 out]. So the disk (and net interface) will appear and disappear. I do not think that is a good user experience.

[PythonNut]

Yes, I see what you mean. (The disks that rapidly oscillate between active and inactive will vanish and appear constantly). You could just hide disks after a certain idle time (say a minute or two). Does that make it better, or just more convoluted?

[jrenner]

Also disks sometimes show activity in bursts. I.e. copying at 3 mb/s might
show me 9mb/s every 3 seconds

[PythonNut]

I think that's what he means. If, say I have a process that does something every second (say a watch cat x or something like that), that disk could appear and disappear every second (though it's limited by glance's refresh interval), which would be annoying. If the disks are required to be visible for a minimum time, however, the problem goes away. I don't know if that would be elegant to implement, however.

[asergi]

Totally agree with @nicolargo's proposal. The "dynamic way" is not viable/reliable at all.
+1 to blacklist them in config file.

[PythonNut]

I see what you mean.

• Most of us don't interact with disks (other than a few main ones) often
• But if we do happen to interact with it, we want to know about it
  • A windows partition that only gets read on occasion (backups, recovery, etc.)
  • A optical drive which is actually empty most of the time.
• If we really do know that we'll never touch a partition, we can still blacklist it.
  • If I blacklist my windows partition, I'll never know if anything happens to it, which could be bad

If we hide inactive disks (my idea), then they jump on and off of the screen, which is bad. Blacklisting network interfaces is great. I never use them without knowing ahead of time. I'm probably looking at this all wrong.

Can you guys think of any other way of doing it?

[nicolargo]

Done here: 4dd4461