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Commands using watch from sorted by
Terminal - Commands using watch - 120 results
watch -n 1 'date "+obase=2; print %H,\":\",%M,\":\",%S" |bc'
2011-02-02 00:01:48
User: smax
Functions: watch
Tags: binary clock binary clock
5
Up
Down
Binary Clock

Binary clock with separate H:M:S.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch --interval 1 "cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/*; cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz; cat /proc/acpi/processor/*/throttling"
2010-12-09 19:47:25
User: unixmonkey14859
Functions: watch
4
Up
Down
Monitor cpu freq and temperature

This is maybe helpfull from system overheat on your linux box

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watch -n 900 "notify-send -t 10000 'Look away. Rest your eyes'"
2010-10-05 09:39:31
User: b_t
Functions: watch
Tags: notify-send watch reminder
0
Up
Down
Remind yourself every 15 minutes (repeated reminders)

Note:

1) -n option of watch accepts seconds

2) -t option of notify-send accepts milliseconds

3) All quotes stated in the given example are required if notification

message is more than a word.

4) I couldn't get this to run in background (use of & at the end fails). Any

suggestions/improvements welcome.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch -n <time_interval> "du -s <file_or_directory>"
2010-08-24 20:05:08
User: stbu
Functions: watch
Tags: file directory directory size,du
2
Up
Down
continuously check size of files or directories
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watch 'ls -tough --full-time *.vmdk'
2010-08-20 17:28:28
User: vRobM
Functions: watch
Tags: ls watch vmware esx snapshots vmdk
1
Up
Down
watch snapshots commit in VMware ESX

To monitor .vmdk files during snapshot deletion (commit) on ESX only (ESXi doesn't have the watch command):

1. Navigate to the VM directory containing .vmdk files.

# watch "ls -tough --full-time *.vmdk"

where:

-t sorts by modification time

-o do not list group information (to narrow the output)

-u sorts by access time

-g only here for the purpose to easily remember the created mnemonic word 'tough'

-h prints sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)

--full-time sets the time style to full-iso and does not list user information (to narrow the output)

optionally useful parameters to the watch command:

-d highlight changes between updates

-n seconds to wait between updates (default is 2)

-t turn off printing the header

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watch -tn1 'date -u +%T -d @$(expr $(date -d HH:MM +%s) - $(date +%s)) | toilet -f bigmono12'
2010-06-26 11:56:11
User: prayer
Functions: date expr watch
Tags: date time
-2
Up
Down
big countdown clock with hours, minutes and seconds

Change HH:MM with your target time.

This is for a Debian/Ubuntu GNU system. You need bash (package bash), date (package coreutils) and toilet (package toilet). Install with:

# apt-get install bash coreutils toilet toilet-fonts

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watch -tn1 'date +%r | figlet'
2010-06-22 10:59:16
User: SuperFly
Functions: watch
4
Up
Down
Big Countdown Clock with hours, minutes and seconds

Figlet is easy to find for download on the internet, and works for any text. Quite cool.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch 'find -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d |xargs du -csh'
2010-05-19 13:13:57
User: shadycraig
Functions: du watch xargs
Tags: size find directory watch
0
Up
Down
Show directory sizes, refreshing every 2s

This command shows the size of directories below here, refreshing every 2s.

It will also track directories created after running the command (that what the find bit does).

Show sample output | Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch -n 1 "sudo asterisk -vvvvvrx 'core show channels' | grep call"
2010-03-26 15:42:13
User: mheadd
Functions: watch
Tags: Ubuntu watch asterisk
4
Up
Down
Watch active calls on an Asterisk PBX

Show active calls as the happen on an Asterisk server. Note that the Asterisk command (in single quotes) is formatted for Asterisk 1.6. Use the -n flag on the watch command to modify the refresh period (in seconds - default is 2 seconds).

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watch -n1 'ifconfig eth0|grep bytes'
2010-03-20 03:24:26
User: qiaomuf
Functions: grep watch
2
Up
Down
watch your network load on specific network interface

-n means refresh frequency

you could change eth0 to any interface you want, like wlan0

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watch -n1 snmptable -v2c -c public localhost diskIOTable
2010-03-19 11:31:52
User: oernii2
Functions: watch
Tags: watch oernii snmp diskio
4
Up
Down
Show simple disk IO table using snmp

Show a simple table with disk IO for the specified host. you monitor a LOT of different thing. Mostly used for MRTG and similar, but this is nice for a quick look, which disk is busy.

"public" is your SNMP community

ensure that snmpd is running on the host which you intend to monitor

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watch "netstat -plan|grep :80|awk {'print \$5'} | cut -d: -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nk 1"
2010-03-15 09:27:43
User: ik_5
Functions: watch
Tags: monitoring httpd port 80
17
Up
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Monitor open connections for httpd including listen, count and sort it per IP

It's not my code, but I found it useful to know how many open connections per request I have on a machine to debug connections without opening another http connection for it.

You can also decide to sort things out differently then the way it appears in here.

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watch -n 7 -d 'uptime | sed s/.*users?, //'
2010-01-17 18:45:52
User: matthewbauer
Functions: sed watch
-1
Up
Down
keep an eye on system load changes
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watch -n1 "du -hs /home/$USER | cut -f1 -d'/' | figlet -k"
2010-01-07 07:30:59
User: cviorel
Functions: watch
3
Up
Down
Watch the size of a directory using figlet

You can substitute /home/$USER with any path you like.

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watch 'dmesg | tail -15'
2009-12-20 02:00:05
User: Heoa
Functions: tail watch
-1
Up
Down
Monitor the Kernel Ring Buffer

Useful with new unknown devices or just monitoring, probably useful for the sysadmin. Updates every 2 seconds. More here: http://linuxclisecurity.blogspot.com/2009/12/monitor-kernel-ring-buffer.html.

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SOURCE: dd if=/dev/sda bs=16065b | netcat ip-target 1234 TARGET: netcat -l -p 1234 | dd of=/dev/mapper/laptop bs=16065b STATS on target: watch -n60 -- kill -USR1 $(pgrep dd)
2009-12-16 10:51:06
User: bw
Functions: dd kill watch
5
Up
Down
create disk copy over the net without temp files

I wanted to create a copy of my whole laptop disk on an lvm disk of the same size.

First I created the logical volume: lvcreate -L120G -nlaptop mylvms

SOURCE: dd if=/dev/sda bs=16065b | netcat ip-target 1234

TARGET: nc -l -p 1234 | dd of=/dev/mapper/mylvms-laptop bs=16065b

to follow its process you issue the following command in a different terminal

STATS: on target in a different terminal: watch -n60 -- kill -USR1 $(pgrep dd)

(see http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4356/output-stats-from-a-running-dd-command-to-see-its-progress)

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watch -n60 --kill -USR1 $(pgrep dd)
2009-12-16 10:35:28
User: bw
Functions: watch
2
Up
Down
output stats from a running dd command to see its progress

if you start a large dd and forgot about statistics, but you still wonder what the progress is this command in an OTHER terminal will show you the way.

NOTE: the watch command by itself will not output anything

NOTE: the kill command will not kill the process

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watch -d 'sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count ; sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Temp'
2009-12-15 00:15:24
User: vxbinaca
Functions: grep sudo watch
2
Up
Down
Expedient hard disk temprature and load cycle stats

This command is a great way to check to see if acpi is doing damage to your disks by agressivly parking the read arm and wearing down it's life. As you can see, mine has lost half its life. I'm sure this could be shortened though somehow. It will use smartctl to dump the stats and then grep out just the temperature and load cycles for the disk (a load cycle is when a the read arm comes out of park and wears on the drive).

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watch -n 1 -d "finger"
2009-12-08 14:53:18
User: tsiqueira
Functions: watch
1
Up
Down
Monitoring sessions that arrive at your server
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watch vmstat -sSM
2009-12-04 22:35:45
User: servermanaged
Functions: vmstat watch
4
Up
Down
Monitor memory usage

Monitor with watch command and vmstat, memory usage

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watch -n 1 "ps aux | sed -n 's/ D /&/p'"
2009-12-03 18:22:44
User: lunarblu
Functions: watch
0
Up
Down
Watch those evil Red Hat states code D Uninterruptible sleep (usually IO).

On my cluster a D in the states column means it is time to reboot the server.

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watch -n1 -d !!
2009-11-24 21:01:14
User: TeacherTiger
Functions: watch
1
Up
Down
watch the previous command

If you just executed some long command, like "ps -aefww | grep -i [m]yProcess", and if you don't want to retype it or cycle backwards in history and waste time quoting it, then you can use history substitution.

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watch -n 10 killall -USR1 dd
2009-11-09 00:03:34
User: Clopnixus
Functions: killall watch
10
Up
Down
check the status of 'dd' in progress
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watch -n 1 'echo "obase=2;`date +%s`" | bc'
2009-11-04 02:04:00
User: matthewbauer
Functions: watch
Tags: binary clock binary clock
34
Up
Down
Binary Clock

Create a binary clock.

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watch -n 60 du /var/log/messages
2009-10-27 14:53:41
User: rbossy
Functions: du watch
1
Up
Down
Monitor a file's size
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