Taskbar program HDD LED/indicator for MX?

[jonny70]

Hello, Linux newbie here.

Is there a tool for MX, that displays HD-activity in the taskbar?
For Zorin-Linux I have found "Harddisk LED". But I'd prefer MX because it's so fast on my virtual machine. Sadly I can't find such a tool for MX.

ps: as a Windows user, I find it very rejecting, that programs do only run on certain Linux versions. But the performance of Linux on a VM is so much better than Win10 in a VM, and once I have set up the system, I do not touch it, so I nevertheless will gladly choose Linux. Like MX so far. IMO for Linux to become a real competitor to Windows, such problems have to be avoided.

[SwampRabbit]

I just searched Repology and nothing comes up for harddisk led, harddiskled, or harddisk-led.

There are plenty of monitoring plugins for the Xfce and KDE panels though. You didn’t say which version of MX is using.

Also if your using VirtualBox, it has a hard disk icon in the bottom right corner which blinks a green dot when the virtual disk is active.

Personally, I think Windows needs to do some things to be a real competitor in the Linux world.

[jeffreyC]

The hard disk led package that I can find is a GNOME shell extension, which depends on GNOME shell.

If you want it enough to run GNOME shell to get it it is in the Debian repos.

[Stevo]

For the xfce taskbar, I install xfce4-wmdock-plugin and wmhdplop, and then add the wmdock item from the Panel Options. This gives a gray box in the panel with the xfce logo. Then running "wmhdplop" from the Alt-F2 app launcher should run it in that box.

Run "wmhdplop -h" in the terminal to get help with size options. Saving the panel config in MX Tweak should make it easier to restore if the panel gets messed up.

[figueroa]

You can use conky to monitor disk i/o; much better than flashing lights.

Code: Select all

${color green}DISK IO:
${color light blue} /dev/sda $color${diskio /dev/sda} ${color light blue} /dev/sdb $color${diskio /dev/sdb}
${color green}USB IO R/W:
${color light blue} /dev/sdg R $color${diskio_read /dev/sdg} ${color light blue} W $color${diskio_write /dev/sdg}
${color light blue} /dev/sdh R $color${diskio_read /dev/sdh} ${color light blue} W $color${diskio_write /dev/sdh}

[JayM]

I use two instances of Disk Performance Monitor in my Xfce panel for that, one for each drive, as the drive activity indicator LED on my computer's case is very dim and not easily seen unless I'm looking straight at it: not a very wide field of view. In fact I thought it wasn't working at all but I just happened to notice it a few days ago. (The case's power LED on the other hand is so bright I had to partially block it with some black tape as it was keeping me awake at night when I happened to leave the computer running. That plus the clear acrylic window on the side are the only things I dislike about this case. It could be worse, it could be a tempered glass side, an accident waiting to happen.)

Disk Performance Monitor doesn't have an "on-off" indicator for disk activity but it has a colored bar graph instead. You have to specify the device that you want it to monitor, i.e. /dev/sda for your SATA drive or /dev/nvme0n1 if you have an NVMe drive, and there are two choices for what you want it to monitor, I/O transfer or busy time. I haven't figured out what the difference is so I set mine to show busy time.

[tascoast]

GKrellM (although a separate dock utility) might also be worth a look. You can slim it down via settings and remove unwanted modules to leave just your target info, HDD in particular, positioning conveniently on a desktop, giving a tacho/digital-like output.

[Stevo]

You can use conky to monitor disk i/o; much better than flashing lights.

Code: Select all

${color green}DISK IO:
${color light blue} /dev/sda $color${diskio /dev/sda} ${color light blue} /dev/sdb $color${diskio /dev/sdb}
${color green}USB IO R/W:
${color light blue} /dev/sdg R $color${diskio_read /dev/sdg} ${color light blue} W $color${diskio_write /dev/sdg}
${color light blue} /dev/sdh R $color${diskio_read /dev/sdh} ${color light blue} W $color${diskio_write /dev/sdh}

The OP asked for a taskbar doodad...

[Stuart_M]

I'd like to second what JayM said in his Post #6, namely the Disk Performance Monitor Panel Add On. I'm using MX-19.4 Xfce.

That Add On lets you choose one or two vertical bars, which will be the height of the Panel (for a horizontal Panel). Choose a single bar by selecting "Combine Read/Write data" in its properties window. Choose two bars to have individual read and write activity bars. You can choose whatever color you want to be displayed in any of the bars.

I have my SSD monitor configured with two bars as shown in the below image, which appears to the left of the MX Updater icon. I didn't have anything on hand where I could get enough SSD activity so I could get a screenshot showing the colored bargraph. I hope you get an idea of what it would look like - just imagine the bar or bars filled with the color of your choosing during activity.

Using two bars, it can be configured in the order you want: Read/Write or Write/Read. Also, I deselected "Label" so it will not display a label, which would be to the left of the bar(s) (the label is whatever is written in the label window next to the checkbox). See the preferences window below.

Disk_Performance_Monitor.png

This is how my monitor preferences window looks. It sounds like you would want only one bar displayed. In that case there would be only one bar color option since you would be combining both read/write activity.

Disk_Performance_Monitor_Properties.png

Edit: I haven't tested it, but I think you can configure it for an on/off display. In Preferences, select "Busy time" (which will automatically unselect "I/O transfer" as well as eliminate the maximum I/O rate window). So if you do that, have it display just one bar, plus uncheck the "Label" option, it should just flash whatever color you selected whenever there is HDD/SSD activity. That should be very close to mimicking an HDD/SSD activity LED.

Edit 2: Disregard my first edit. I just did a quick test by selecting "Busy time" and found that it will still show activity in the bar graph based on how much data is being read or written, just as it does in "I/O transfer". So I too cannot tell the difference between the two settings. I had thought that "Busy time" would fill the entire bar graph regardless, staying illuminated longer for larger amounts of data being measured (like an activity LED).

[Stuart_M]

This is a followup my Post #9.

I think I was able to configured the Disk Performance Monitor Panel Add-On to as close as possible to what the original poster (jonny70) wanted. My recommendation is to try it and see for yourself. If you don't like it, just remove it from the Panel (right-click the item you want to remove on the Panel and choose "Remove"). (And since you're new to Linux, in case you don't know how to add this item, just right-click an empty spot on the Panel > select Panel > Add New Items > select "Disk Performance Monitor".)

In its Preferences, uncheck "Label" so the bar graph is displayed by itself.

This is the different part: Select "I/O transfer" and in "Max. I/O rate (MiB/s)" enter 5. This is the minimum amount you can enter. Note that if you select anything lower, it will automatically go to "5" when the Preferences window is closed (this is when it writes any changes made in Preferences to its configuration file).

Finally, enable "Combine Read/Write data" so there will be only one bar graph. Change to any color you want to be displayed by left-clicking on the color. Green (#00FF00) is the default color.

This is the closest I can get it to display in an on/off manner. Since the maximum data rate is set to the minimum (5 MiB/s), anything lower than that rate will be displayed as a percentage of 100%. But any data rate higher than 5 MiB/s will be displayed at 100%.

This is an image of how the above configuration will look. This is as close to mimicking an HDD/SSD on/off activity LED that I was able to get. Like my last post, it is located to the left of the MX Updater icon.

Disk_Performance_Monitor_2.png

By the way, I now understand the difference between the "I/O transfer" and "Busy time" settings.

"I/O transfer" will display a bar graph based on the amount of data being passed to the device, which is also based on the maximum data rate that is entered.

"Busy time" will display a bar graph based only on the percentage of time the device is busy.

Both will give similar results, so it's not easy to see the differences.