The Work Space

The KSysguard Handbook
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# 2.3. The Work Space

The work space is organized as work sheets. Select New from the File menu to create a new work sheet. A dialog will appear where you can set the name and the dimension of the work sheet. To remove a work sheet again, select Close from the File menu. Any modifications will be saved to the work sheet file. In case a work sheet has never been saved you are asked for a file name. Work sheets consist of cells organized as a grid.

Each cell can be filled with a display for one or more sensors. You can fill a cell by dragging a sensor from the sensor browser and dropping it over the cell. In case there is more than one type of display available for that type of sensor, a popup menu will appear. You can then select which display you prefer to use. Certain types of displays can display more than one sensor. Add more sensors to a displays by dragging them over from the sensor browser and dropping them over the already existing display.

Displays can be configured by clicking with the right mouse button on them. A popup menu appear where you can select whether you want to change the properties of that display or remove it from the work sheet.

## 2.3.1. Signal Plotter

The signal plotter prints samples of one or more sensors over time. In case several sensors are displays the values are piled in different colours. If the display is large enough a grid will be displayed to show the range of the plotted samples. If you set the minimum and maximum value in the properties dialog to 0 the plotter will work in automatic range mode. Otherwise the specified values for the range are used.

## 2.3.2. Multimeter

The multimeter displays the sensor values as a digital meter. In the properties dialog you can specify minimum and maximum values. In case the range is execeeded the display is colored in red and a warning box appears.

## 2.3.3. Process Controller

The Process Controller gives you a list of processes on your system. The list can be sorted by each column. Just press the left mouse button over the head of the column.

The list shows the following information about each process. Please note that not all properties are available on every operating system.

PID

  The Process ID. A unique number for each process.

Name

  The name of the executable that started the process.

User ID

  The login name of the user that started the process.

CPU

  The processor load of the process in percent.

Time

  The total computation time of the process so far.

Nice

  The scheduling priority.

Status

  The process status.

Memory

  The total amount of memory (in kBytes) the process uses. This includes shared memory.

Resident

  The amount of physical memory (in kBytes) the process uses.

Shared

  The amount of memory (in kBytes) the process shares with other processes.

Underneath the table you find four buttons which will be described now from left to right.

### 2.3.3.1. The Tree View

The tree view has been designed to show the relationships between the running processes. A process that is started by another process is called the child of that process. A tree is an elegant way to show this parent-child relationship. The init process is the ancester of all processes.

If you are not interested in the children of a particular process you can click on the little box to the left of the parent and the subtree will collapse. Another click on that box will unfold the subtree again.

### 2.3.3.2. The Process Filter

The Process Filter can be used to reduce the number of processes displayed in the table. You can filter out processes you are not interested in. Currently you can display all processes, system processes only, user processes only or your processes only.

### 2.3.3.3. The Pause Button

Select the pause button if you want to halt the automatic update of the process list.

### 2.3.3.4. The Refresh Button

This button can be used to force an immediate update of the process list.

### 2.3.3.5. The Kill Button

If you have selected one or more processes you can press the kill button to kill them. A so called SIGKIL is sent to the processes which causes them to terminate immediately. If these applications still have unsaved data this data will be lost. So use this button with care.

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