Server Monitor

Server Monitor is a lightweight VS Code status bar extension for Linux servers. It is designed for remote development sessions where you want a quick read on CPU, memory, swap, disk usage, load, and uptime without opening a terminal.

Each metric is rendered as its own status bar item, so every section has its own hover tooltip.

Features

• CPU usage from /proc/stat
• Memory usage from /proc/meminfo
• Swap usage from /proc/meminfo
• Active swap files from /proc/swaps
• Load average from /proc/loadavg
• Uptime from /proc/uptime
• Mounted-volume discovery from /proc/self/mountinfo
• Disk usage using Node's fs.statfs()
• One status item per distinct filesystem volume
• One hover tooltip per metric
• Configurable refresh interval and displayed metrics
• No privileged commands
• No recursive disk scans in the live polling loop

Default Status Items

The default status bar shows:

CPU  Memory  Swap  one item per mounted volume  Load

The default configuration is:

{
  "serverMonitor.intervalMs": 2000,
  "serverMonitor.items": [
    "cpu",
    "mem",
    "swap",
    "disk",
    "load"
  ],
  "serverMonitor.tooltipDiskPaths": []
}

Settings

serverMonitor.intervalMs

Refresh interval in milliseconds.

Default:

2000

Minimum:

1000

serverMonitor.items

Status bar items to show.

Supported values:

• cpu
• mem
• swap
• load
• uptime
• disk (automatically discovers mounted volumes)
• disk:/path

Example:

[
  "cpu",
  "mem",
  "swap",
  "disk",
  "uptime"
]

serverMonitor.tooltipDiskPaths

Optional preferred disk paths. If a preferred path belongs to a discovered volume, it is used as that volume's label. Volumes are still deduplicated by device.

Example:

[
  "/mnt/data"
]

Commands

Server Monitor: Refresh

Refreshes the metrics immediately.

Install From VSIX

Build the package:

npm install
npm run compile
npm run package

Install it into the current VS Code server:

code --install-extension server-monitor-<version>.vsix --force

After installing, reload the VS Code window.

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Compile once:

npm run compile

Watch TypeScript:

npm run watch

Package a VSIX:

npm run package

Project Structure

server-monitor/
  package.json
  tsconfig.json
  src/
    config.ts
    extension.ts
    format.ts
    linux.ts
    monitor.ts
    types.ts

extension.ts

VS Code entrypoint.

• Creates one status bar item per configured metric.
• Starts and restarts the polling timer.
• Watches configuration changes.
• Registers Server Monitor: Refresh.

monitor.ts

Coordinates metric collection.

• Caches the previous CPU sample.
• Collects Linux metrics in parallel where practical.
• Produces one normalized metric snapshot.

linux.ts

Linux metric readers.

Sources:

• /proc/stat
• /proc/meminfo
• /proc/swaps
• /proc/loadavg
• /proc/uptime
• /proc/self/mountinfo
• fs.statfs(path)

format.ts

Formats status bar text and per-item tooltip text.

Uses VS Code Codicons such as:

$(chip)
$(server)
$(archive)
$(database)
$(pulse)
$(watch)

Codicon browser:

https://microsoft.github.io/vscode-codicons/dist/codicon.html

Disk Usage Notes

Server Monitor discovers mounts from /proc/self/mountinfo, ignores virtual filesystems such as proc, sysfs, and tmpfs, and deduplicates mount paths that point to the same underlying device. It then uses fs.statfs() for disk usage. This is equivalent to asking the filesystem for already-maintained block counts, like df.

This is cheap:

df -h /
df -h /home/django

This is intentionally not used in the live loop:

du -sh /home

du recursively walks files and directories. It can be expensive on large repositories, node_modules, build caches, .git directories, and mounted volumes.

CPU Calculation

CPU usage is calculated from two /proc/stat samples.

For each sample:

idle = idle + iowait
total = sum(all cpu columns)

Between samples:

cpuPercent = 100 * (1 - idleDelta / totalDelta)

The first sample shows a warming-up state because there is no previous sample yet.

Future Ideas

• Configurable icons
• Configurable alignment and priority
• Warning colors for high memory/swap/disk usage
• Optional process list command
• Optional manual folder-size command using du
• Detail webview with short history charts
• Port/service status checks