Linux System Dashboard

A live, auto-refreshing dashboard that runs right in your terminal and shows you what's going on with your Linux machine; CPU, memory, disk space, network, temperature, and top processes, all in one screen, updating automatically.

Think of it like a simplified, terminal-based Task Manager on (Windows) or Activity Monitor (Mac), but built entirely with plain Bash and standard Linux tools.

What It Shows You

Section	What it means in plain terms
HOST	Basic info about your machine; hostname, OS version, kernel version, and how long it's been running (uptime)
LOAD AVERAGE	How "busy" your system is on average over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes. Lower is calmer.
CPU	What percentage of your processor is currently being used, plus what CPU model you have
MEMORY	How much RAM is total / used / free / available, plus swap (backup memory on disk)
DISK	How full your storage drives are, and how much space is left
NETWORK	Your active network connections (like Wi-Fi or Ethernet), their IP addresses, and how much data has been sent/received since boot
TEMPERATURE	Your hardware's temperature sensors, if your machine exposes them (cloud servers often don't have this)
TOP 5 PROCESSES	The 5 programs currently using the most CPU

Everything is color-coded: green means healthy, yellow means getting busy, red means it's running hot/full/high.

How to Use It

1. Make it executable (only needs to be done once):

chmod +x sysdash.sh

2. Run it:

./sysdash.sh

By default, it refreshes every 2 seconds. To change that, pass a number (in seconds) as an argument:

./sysdash.sh 5     # refresh every 5 seconds
./sysdash.sh 10    # refresh every 10 seconds

3. Stop it: Press Ctrl + C at any time, it'll exit cleanly with a goodbye message instead of just cutting off.

Requirements

No installation needed beyond what most Linux systems already have built in:

• Bash (the shell itself)
• Standard tools: df, free, uptime, ps, ip, awk

Works on virtually any Linux distro; Ubuntu, Debian, Amazon Linux, etc. Some sections (like Temperature) may show "not available" on cloud VMs, since virtual servers often don't expose hardware sensors — that's expected, not a bug.

Why It's Built This Way (for anyone learning Bash/Linux)

This script was intentionally written to double as a learning example, not just a tool:

• Uses standard commands (df, free, ps, etc.) instead of manually parsing system files everywhere, because that's what you'd actually reach for as a sysadmin or DevOps engineer day-to-day.
• Each section is its own function, so you can study, copy, or disable one piece at a time without breaking the rest.
• The live refresh is hand-built (clear the screen -> redraw -> wait -> repeat) instead of using the watch command, so you can actually see how a "live" terminal dashboard works under the hood.
• CPU usage is calculated manually by reading /proc/stat twice, a fraction of a second apart, and comparing the numbers — which is the same basic technique tools like top use internally.

Example Output

+================================================+
|           LINUX SYSTEM DASHBOARD              |
+================================================+
2026-09-09 10:15:32  |  refresh: 2s  |  Ctrl+C to quit

-- HOST
  Hostname:    my-server
  OS:          Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  Kernel:      6.8.0-1015-aws
  Uptime:      up 3 hours, 12 minutes

-- CPU
  Usage: 14%
  Model: Intel Xeon Platinum (2 cores)

-- MEMORY
  Total: 3.8G   Used: 1.1G   Free: 1.9G   Available: 2.6G [29%]
  ...

License

Free to use, modify, and learn from.