Miscellaneous Ramblings

Monitor Your Mac, the Weather, and Stocks for Free Using XRG

Charles Moore - 2005.08.15 - Tip Jar

I test an awful lot of utilities, applications, and add-ons for my columns and features, but I only end up using a few of them on a regular basis. I'm actually very happy with pretty much the same basic suite of software tools I've been using for years - many since the OS 9 days where OS X native versions are available.

I'm not big on having a lot of system add-ons running, although there are a few key ones (like TypeIt4Me and WindowShade X) that I would find it very hard to live without.

However, once in a while a piece of software comes along that clicks with me. Such is XRG (X Resource Graph), an open source system monitor by Mike Piatek-Jimenez for Mac OS X that allows you to monitor CPU activity, memory usage, battery status, machine temperature, network activity, disk I/O, current weather, and stock market data.

XRG, horizontal configuration
XRG in horizontal configuration - click image for full sized view

XRG, vertical configurationYou can configure the monitor window to display only the information categories you want, as in the reduced horizontal example above and the full sized vertical example to the right. (Editor's note: I've had XRG on my Macs for ages. These screen shots are from my eMac. Others may be from different computers.)

The stated mission of XRG is to provide a functional system monitor with a clean and flexible interface, one that doesn't intrude on the rest of your Mac experience.

XRG is also designed to take as little CPU time as possible while still showing detailed graphs on system usage. For example, XRG is claimed to use 3-5% of the CPU on a 667 MHz G4, and 1-5% of the CPU on a dual 1.25 GHz G4. Personally, I haven't noticed that it degrades performance noticeably even when running on my relatively puny 700 MHz G3 iBook.

XRG includes a machine temperature module that will graph the temperature of different locations in your computer - provided that your CPU has temperature sensors. Unfortunately, the IBM 750FX chip in my iBook doesn't. (Editor's note: Ditto for my PowerBook G4/400 and 1.25 GHz eMacs.) Supported models include Power Mac G5s, aluminum PowerBook G4s, and iBook G4s.

Other features include the addition of uptime statistics to the CPU graph, the ability to drag XTF theme files to the graph to set graph colors, and the option to hide XRG's Dock icon through a new contextual menu for the graph title bar.

XRG's window collapses to its title bar, which is small enough to be unobtrusive. It expands and contracts on mouseover. If you disable that function in the Preferences, it expands and collapses with a double click.

The temperature graph supports newer Power Mac and PowerBook models with supported temperature and/or fan sensors, including the Power Mac G5, iMac G5, aluminum PowerBook G4, and iBook G4. Later machines may or may not be supported in current versions of XRG.

Some older Macs (such as the Mirrored Drive Doors G4s) have sensors on their CPU(s), but these will not be displayed in the Temperature graph. Instead, these temperature values will only be displayed in the CPU graph.

XRG will display n/a where the CPU temperature should be if it fails to find any temperature sensors that it can monitor. Many older Macs do not have any temperature sensors at all, in which case there are not any sensors for the XRG graph to find.

XRG also has the ability to hide the application icon in the Dock. Unfortunately, this also hides the main application menu, so the option to disable the dock icon is only in the contextual menus, which can still be accessed when the Dock icon and application menu are hidden. To toggle whether or not the Dock icon is shown, either right-click or control-click on the XRG window title bar and select Hide/Show XRG Dock Icon (after restart). Then quit XRG, and the next time the application is opened, the Dock icon will be hidden (or shown).

The XRG graph can be resized by clicking on the border at any location and dragging it appropriately. If you click and drag on a corner, it will resize the window's width and height. If you only want to resize the window in one direction, drag on an edge instead of a corner. Also, the graph's orientation can be changed from the default vertical orientation to a horizontal orientation. Select which window orientation you would like to use in the General Preferences.

XRG Preferences
XRG Preferences - click image for full sized view

Editor's note: One nice feature of XRG is that you can customize the colors. The default colors are a bit on the dark/garish side, in my opinion, so I've set my copies of XRG to use lighter shades of these colors.

load averageThe load average is the average number of processes that are currently waiting for the CPU at any given time. Usually, a load average of 1 on a single processor machine means that the CPU is always busy, because one process is always waiting for the CPU. A dual CPU machine should theoretically be completely busy when the load average is 2 (one process for each processor).

When the Battery graph displays a 95% charge but claims the battery is fully charged, the apparent discrepancy originates in Apple's Power Management implementation. It's not good for a lithium battery to be charged just a very little bit at one time. Since batteries will lose a small amount of charge over a period of time, it would shorten the life of the battery if it was charged every time it dropped below 100%. For this reason, Apple's Power Management implementation will assume that the battery is charged when the battery percentage is above 95% and will only recharge it to a full 100% charge when the percentage drops below 95%.

Weather GraphThe Weather Module can be configured in the preferences to read out weather information from weather stations around the world. The nearest one to me is about 40 miles away as the crow flies, and it works great.

As I mentioned, I cottoned to XRG and keep it running a lot of the time. The two references I use most are the local weather and uptime since the last restart, although machine temperature would be of interest if my machine supported it.

The main annoyance I've had is that the program is sometimes unresponsive to double clicking to collapse the window back to its title bar, requiring several attempts before it cooperates. The mouseover expand and collapse function works fine, however.

For a freeware application, XRG has a very decent and comprehensive online Help manual (see some excerpts in the Appendix below).

XRG 1.1 contains bug fixes and some new features. The primary new features include enhanced support for temperature sensors in the iMac G5 and fan sensor monitoring on multiple types of machines. Other new features include compatibility with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and "Update Now" menu options for the Weather and Stock graphs. Bugs have been fixed in the Temperature, Weather, and Battery graphs.

Version 1.1 changes, enhancements and fixes:

  • Fixed bug with font not getting selected when opening the font panel. (Code from Nils Hjelte)
  • Fixed bug in weather contextual menu where temperature would show up as 1F while temperature units set to Celsius. (Code from Tor Sigurdsson)
  • Fixed bug with changing window orientation from horizontal to vertical when the window is very large.
  • Condensed the minimum graph width for the Disk, Network, and Weather graphs.
  • Added Update Weather Graph Now option in the weather contextual menu.
  • Added Update Stock Graph Now option in the stock contextual menu.
  • Buffered the change in the fast CPU graph so it's less jumpy.
  • Fixed a bug in the temperature graph where the last sensor wouldn't be displayed if selected as a graph.
  • Fixed a bug in the temperature preferences to cover the case if the number of sensors changes and a setting was out of range.
  • Made the temperature graph labels a little better at resizing.
  • Added fan sensor support to the temperature graph.
  • New Icon. (Created by Laurent Baumann)
  • Cut the amount of drawing time for the temperature graph in half.
  • Added support for PowerBook G4 exhaust fans.
  • Added support for iMac G5 temperature/fan sensors.
  • Added support for PWM G5 sensors.
  • Added warning dialog before enabling fan sensors.
  • Fixed a font bug. Set the font height based on the entire alphabet of a font and not just a single letter.
  • Made version checking more robust.
  • Fixed a bug in the temperature module where sensors wouldn't be disabled properly if they went away (as the exhaust fans in PowerBooks do).
  • Added compatibility for Tiger.
  • Fixed bug in battery graph caused by the amperage being retrieved changing in later versions of Panther. Amperage bar graph now works again.
  • Made temperature graph text drawing more robust.
  • Possibly fixed a bug in network graph where PPP connections could add quite a bit of "virtual" traffic that didn't really occur to the total bandwidth used since boot time.

System requirements: All versions of XRG have been fully tested and work on Mac OS X 10.2.x (Jaguar). XRG 0.4.0 and later work under Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther) as well as Jaguar.

Appendix: The XRG Modules

The CPU Graph

load averageThe CPU Graph readout will vary depending on your preferences and the type of machine you are on. The image shown is on a single processor machine. For dual processor Macs, the graph will be split in half, with one CPU's activity shown on the top, and the other's activity on the bottom.

On the top line of the graph, XRG displays the current percentage of the CPU that is being used. If you have a dual processor machine, there will be a percentage displayed for each CPU.

If you have "Separate Coloring for User/System/Nice CPU time" turned on, then the graph will be split into three colors.

Graph Foreground Color 1 designates the System CPU Load, or the amount of CPU time spent in the core system code.

Graph Foreground Color 2 designates the User CPU Load, or the amount of CPU time spent by applications started by users who are logged in.

Graph Foreground Color 3 designates the Nice CPU Load, or the amount of CPU time spent by applications that are set to be nicer than others. XRG is set as a nice application, which means it will give up it's CPU time when the computer is extremely loaded.

With "Show Average % Usage" turned on, XRG will display the average % of the CPU used for the time frame currently shown on the graph.

If you have "Show Load Average" turned on, then XRG will show the machine's load average on a line labeled as "Load." The load average is the average number of processes that are currently waiting for the CPU.

If you enable "Show CPU Temperature" in the preferences and your processor supports it, XRG will display the current CPU temperature. This is highly inaccurate on slightly older machines, and could be off by as much as 12 degrees. Newer machines have sensors for different locations of the computer. See the temperature graph help section for more details and for system support.

Finally, there is an option to display a more immediate "Fast CPU Graph." This graph is updated 5 times a second and is shown in the rightmost ~10 pixels of the graph.

The Memory Graph

Memory GraphThe Memory Graph is divided into 3 main sections. The first is the informational text. The text shows (F)ree memory, (I)nactive memory, (A)ctive memory, (W)ired memory, (Ca)che hit rate, and Page Faults.

Free Memory is self-explanatory, it's the amount of RAM that isn't allocated by any applications. Inactive memory is memory that is either left over from previous applications, or is in use by current applications but not readily available in the system memory map.

Active memory is memory used by current applications and is in the system memory map.

Wired memory is allocated by the kernel and cannot be swapped out to disk; it's locked, or wired into main memory.

Cache hit rate is the percentage of the time that the operating system looks for a memory page in cache and finds it. The higher your cache hit rate, the more efficient your machine is running.

Finally, the page fault value is the number of times that a page fault occurs multiplied by the size of a memory page (4k), to give a rough estimate of the bandwidth being used by page faults.

The second main section is a graphical representation of the memory allocated along the right size of the graph.

Graph Foreground Color 1 shows the amount of wired memory, Graph Foreground Color 2 shows the amount of active memory, Graph Foreground Color 3 shows the amount of inactive memory,

Graph Background Color shows the amount of memory that is free.

The third main section of the memory graph is a paging graph that is displayed directly under the text on the left side of the graph. This graph shows the page fault, page in, and page out activity on the system.

A page fault (Graph Foreground 1) occurs when the system fails to find a memory address in the system memory map. When a page fault occurs, the system loads the needed page either from inactive memory or from the disk.

A page-in (Graph Foreground 2) occurs when a page is currently swapped out to virtual memory and needs to be loaded back into active memory.

A page-out (Graph Foreground 3) occurs when more memory is needed and a page is swapped from RAM out to virtual memory.

The Battery Graph

Battery GraphThe battery graph shows many more statistics than the standard MacOS X battery monitor. This graph will only work with PowerBooks and iBooks, as desktop machines don't have any batteries with the capability of being monitored.

The first bar graph displays the current charge percentage along with an estimated time of how much longer the battery will last. The graph shows the percentage in Graph Foreground Color 1. When the battery is charging, the time estimation is for how long it will take the battery to fully charge. Also, to designate that the battery is charging, there will be a small animation in the remaining battery capacity section of the graph.

The second bar graph displays the current voltage that the battery is providing. The scale of this graph can be somewhat random, and XRG uses the max of the scale as the highest voltage reading it has gathered since it was launched. The third bar graph displays how much current the battery is providing while running on battery, or how much current the battery is drawing while the PowerBook is plugged in. If you take both the current voltage and the current amperage, and multiply them, you will get the wattage that your PowerBook is currently using.

The rest of the battery graph is used to display the battery charge over a length of time. The graph is updated every 30 seconds, which is how much time one pixel width of the graph represents. On this graph, there will be two lines of text (if there is room to display them). The first line has the current capacity of the battery in mAh (milli-ampere hours), and the second is the maximum capacity of the battery, also in mAh. The maximum capacity determines how long the battery will last in your PowerBook. Over time, you will notice that this number goes down. This is caused by wear and tear on the battery and is the reason your PowerBook doesn't last the 3-5 hours that it used to when it was new.

The Temperature Graph

Temperature GraphThe temperature graph displays the temperature of different sensors mounted in some new PowerMac and PowerBook/iBook computers. If XRG doesn't recognize any valid sensors in your computer to monitor, it will display No Sensors Found. Currently, machines that are known to work with the XRG temperature graph include the PowerMac G5, Aluminum PowerBooks 12"/15"/17" models, and the G4 iBooks.

The image shown is from a dual processor PowerMac G5. The CPU A/B Amb values are ambient temperatures of the air surrounding the G5s. This isn't the temperature of the chips themselves; as there are no known sensors that give that information. The U3 Heatsink shows the temperature of the of the System Controller. This is the chip that manages traffic between the processors and the rest of the system. The Drive Bay is an ambient temperature of that zone. Both of the Mib temperatures are for the zones that enclose the PCI cards. Finally, the backside temperature is just as it says, the ambient temperature of the back side of the computer.

PowerBooks and iBooks are slightly different. Newer generations contain more sensors than older ones, and depending on the display, sensors could be located in different locations as well. The sensors that are known include Hdd Bottomside, CPU Topside/Bottomside, CPU Core, CPU/Intrepid Bottomside, GPU On Die, Pwr Supply Bottomside, Pwr/Memory Bottomside, Battery, Rear Main Enclosure, and Rear Left/Right Exhaust. The Hdd sensor is for the internal hard drive, the CPU temperatures are for various locations with respect to the CPU (Intrepid may be a daughtercard or a controller chip), GPU On Die is the temperature of the graphics processor (which is usually an ATI Radeon chip), and the rest are fairly self-explanatory.

In the preferences, you have an option to display up to three sensors as their own separate line graphs. Over time, these values don't change much, but you could see dramatic changes when doing anything on your computer that stresses a certain part of the computer. For example, doing a lot of file and network copying would increase the disk temperature, charging a battery would increase the battery and power supply temperatures, and playing an advanced OpenGL game would probably increase everything (most notably, the CPU, U3, GPU, and Mib temperatures).

The Network Graph

Network GraphThe network graph displays how fast you are sending and receiving data on your network connection. The send data rate is displayed in Graph Foreground Color 1, and the received data rate is displayed in Graph Foreground Color 2. By default, these two rates are displayed by stacking on top of each other. There is an option in the preferences to either invert the send data rate or the receive data rate. The number in the upper left corner below "Net" is the scale of the graph. In this case, the scale from top to bottom of the graph shown is 10K/sec.

There is an option in the preferences to set a minimum scale to show, and since there wasn't much network traffic in the image shown the scale was set to the minimum, which in this case is 10K/sec.

Right below this, if you have "Show Total Bandwidth used since boot time" and/or "Show Total Bandwidth used since XRG was opened" enabled in the preferences, the graph will display these numbers as well. There is a limitation with showing the Total Bandwidth used since system boot time.

The method that XRG uses to gather these statistics returns 32 bit values. This means, that when XRG is first opened, it can not detect more than 4 GB of network traffic in one direction on one interface. For this reason, unless XRG is opened close to the time that the system was booted, this number may be incorrect.

Total Bandwidth used since XRG was opened should always be a correct value, as XRG keeps track of bandwidth used while it's open with 64 bit numbers, which are much larger. On the bottom of the graph, both the most recent transfer (Tx) data rate and the most recent receive (Rx) data rate are displayed. If your preferences are set to invert the send or receive graph, the corresponding data rate text will be shown at the top of the graph as well.

The Disk Graph

Disk GraphThe disk graph displays how fast you are reading and writing data to block devices (local hard drives). The write speed is displayed as Graph Foreground Color 1, and the read speed is displayed as Graph Foreground Color 2. The default display here is to have the two graph values stacked on top of each other. There is an option in the preferences to either invert the read data rate or the write data rate. The number in the upper left corner below "Disk" is the scale of the graph. In this case, the scale from the top to the bottom of the graph shown is 83.6K/sec. On the bottom of the graph, both the most recent (R)ead speed and (W)rite speed is shown. If your preferences are set to invert the read or write graph, the corresponding read or write speed will be shown at the top of the graph as well.

The Weather Graph

Weather GraphThe weather graph shows a variety of current weather statistics along with a graph of the temperature (and optionally a secondary value) over the past 24 hours. The first line of text is the current ICAO code that is being referenced for the weather data. You can find a list of ICAO codes for different locations here.

The lines below that show the current (T)emperature, last 24 hour (H)igh and (L)ow temperatures, (W)ind direction/speed in knots and (G)ust speeds if applicable, (R)elative (H)umidity calculated from the temperature and dew-point, (V)isibility, (D)ew-point, and (Pr)essure. Distances are displayed with units in miles or kilometers. Pressure is displayed with units of inches or hectopascals.

Temperature is shown in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. Units can be configured in the preferences. The primary graph (temperature) is displayed as a region filled in with Graph Foreground Color 1. Users can choose to show one of the other values to graph as a secondary graph which is drawn as a line in Graph Foreground Color 2.

The Stock Graph

Stock GraphThe stock graph can display pricing information for one or more stock symbols. The stock symbols to monitor are configured in the preferences, and the text on the graph will show the last closing price of the stock. If "Show last day change" is enabled, then the line below each stock symbol shows the change in stock value from the previous day. If "Show DJIA as a secondary graph" is enabled, then the last DJIA closing price will be shown in the lower left corner of the graph.

Also, the DJIA closing price will be graphed in Graph Foreground Color 2 as a line. The number in the lower right corner of the graph shows the horizontal graph scale (designating if 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year of data is shown in the graph). The stock graph only graphs the closing price of one stock symbol at a time.

The text of the stock symbol currently shown on the graph will be highlighted as Graph Foreground Color 3 and displayed on the top line of the graph. If there are too many stock symbols to display with the current graph size, a down arrow will be displayed on the last line designating that there are other symbols which could not be displayed because of size constraints.

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Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column was a regular feature on MacOpinion, he is news editor at Applelinks.com and a columnist at MacPrices.net. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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