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System Manager V1.0 New For Mac OS X

System Manager came into being from a desire to roll the functionality of several of my favourite apps into one app, increase the functionality of a few of them, and free up some Dock space. Other functions were, and will be, added to increase it's overall usefullness such as system log monitoring, file/folder permissions control, trash management, and possible improvements to Process Monitoring to name a few.

Performance

Upon launch the System Manager 'renices' itself to the lowest priority setting so that if another app requires the CPU, it will be available and the System Manager will not hog the CPU. There are a minimum of 4 graphs contained within the System Manager, with one of those graphs able to be represented within the Dock icon. By using the slowest refresh rates for each of the graphs, you can lessen the CPU requirements of System Manager. As shipped, all drawing options for the graphs are turned on. You can lessen the CPU requirements by turning some of the options off, such as stats display or scale lines, etc. Finally, if a graph window is hidden, not visible, and it is not set for display in the Dock icon, then no CPU time is required by that component.

Features:

• CPU Monitor
• Load Monitor
• Memory Monitor
• Process Monitor
• Network Monitor
• Uptime Monitor
• Classic Monitor
• Network IP Numbers
• System Preference Panes

CPU Monitor:

CPU Monitor shows the CPU load. There are multiple graphs, one for each CPU installed in the system. The graphs show separate plots for System, User, Idle, Nice, Average and Total CPU usage. Nice Usage is usage from reniced (reprioritized) apps and is currently unimplemented in Mac OS X. The graph also displays a digital readout of the current core operating temperature of the CPU. This is only supported on certain CPU's and is included merely as a curiosity. The borders of the graphs change colors and size, as CPU usage increase/decrease.

Load Monitor:

Load Monitor shows the average system process load, not the CPU load. This is the amount of processes in the system queue waiting for the CPU at any one time. There are 3 values for the System Load:

• Average process load for the past 5 seconds.
• Average process load for the past 30 seconds.
• Average process load for the past 60 seconds.

Memory Monitor:

Memory Monitor show the memory usage under Mac OS X. There are 4 main components to memory usage based on the total amount of memory installed:

• Free Memory: This is memory available for use immediately by an application or the system.
• InActive Memory: This is memory that has been used, and could be used again if needed. Swappable.
• Active Memory: This is memory currently in use. Swappable.
• Wired Memory: This is memory currently in use. UnSwappable.

As paging (Disk Swapping) occurs, these values are displayed along with graph plots based on the amount of paging. There are a range of other memory statistics displayed as well. (Information on these stats are forthcoming)

Network Monitor:

Network Monitor shows the network activity in and out for each installed interface. In this release, only the Built-in Ethernet (en0) is supported with no means of changing the default 2 second update parameter. Currently, the Network Monitor depends on the unix 'netstat' command and I'm looking to replace this with direct kernel calls. This will be implemented in the next release.

Process Monitor:

Process Monitor is currently a list of all processes on the machine displayed in the Dock icon's contextual Menu. Each process will show a few statistics in a submenu. You can renice (change priority) and kill all processes with that submenu.

Uptime Monitor:

Uptime Monitor is available in the Dock icon's contextual Menu. It shows, the current time, the amount of time passed since the last reboot, the number of users, and the average System Load. This is merely a redisplay of the unix 'uptime' command.

Classic Monitor:

Classic Monitor provides an icon in the Menubar, Dock Icon, or any of the graph windows, showing the current status of the Classic environment; nothing if it is inactive, or a large Aqua Nine if it is active. There is also a menu selection in the Dock icon's contextual Menu to properly start/shutdown the Classic Environment.

Network IP Numbers:

Network IP's are available in the Dock icon's contextual Menu. They show the IP numbers for each installed interface.

System Preference Panes:

The contextual menu in the Dock icon maintains a list of all installed Preference Panes allowing you to select a specific pane in the System Preferences and open it.