GoMonitor

Monitor system usage, a sort of parental control (for linux systems).

So, here is the thing:

• I needed a way to avoid having my son turn into a fucking monkey playing Minecraft.
• I tried Timekpr-nExT and it didn't work well.
• I'm impatient and instead of make it work better, I decided to write something myself.
• I suck at programming this stuff, I'm not used to it and I don't have too much time to waste bothering my family.

I needed a few simple stuff:

• Check the total time spent and logout the user when it reaches a limit.
• Have some sort of downtime functionality
• View some statistics about what the user did.

Here comes GoMonitor (which is a really bad piece of software).

Features:

• Check the total time spent and logout the user when it reaches a limit
• Support a downtime functionality, user is logged out when reaches the time window limit
• View some statistics about what the user did

Lol

Getting started

Installation

Clone this repo

$ git clone git@github.com:abidibo/GoMonitor.git

Configuration

Create the file /etc/gomonitor.json. Yes, it's a json file. Yes GoMonitor does not provide a shiny root user interface to configure it.

{
  "app": {
    "homePath": "/SOME/PATH/.gomonitor",
    "screenTimeLimitMinutes": {
      "USER": 120,
    },
    "screenTimeWindow": {
      "USER": {
        "start": "07:00",
        "stop": "21:00",
      },
    },
    "screenTimeApi": {
      "OTHER_USER": "https://myapi/gomonitor",
    },
    "highlightsApi": {
      "USER": {
        "url": "https://myapi/gomonitor/highlights",
        "intervalMinutes": 10
      }
    },
    "logIntervalMinutes": 10,
    "retainPeriodDays": 10
  }
}

GoMonitor writes its stuff (db and logs) in the homePath directory.

GoMonitor logs out USER when it reaches the screenTimeLimitMinutes

GoMonitor logs out USER if outside of the screenTimeWindow (unless start equals stop)

GoMonitor logs every logIntervalMinutes (and uses this interval to aggregate the time spent by the user, so keep it small)

GoMonitor keeps data and logs for retainPeriodDays days

Replace USER with the user you want to monitor.

You can set a static limits for screenTimeLimitMinutes and screenTimeWindow or use an API endpoint for screenTimeApi, in such case you must return the following json response:

{
  "screenLimitMin": 120,
  "timeWindowStart": "07:00",
  "timeWindowStop": "21:00"
}

Please note the format of timeWindowStart and timeWindowStop, that should be HH:MM.

GoMonitor logs running processes in order to create stats about programs usage. GoMonitor considers processes which are wasting memory or cpu time as running. In stats and highlights GoMonitor will retrieve the first 30 process ordered by cpu usage and memory consumption.

You can set an highlight remote api in order to receive stats in real time. The API will be called every highlightApi.intervalMinutes minutes, through POST with the following payload:

{
  "date": "2022-01-01",
  "user": "USER",
  "processes": [
    {
      "processName": "chrome",
      "processTime": 23      
    },
    ...
  ]
}

For each process you can see the elapsed time in minutes.

Usage

GoMonitor behaves differently when running as root or as normal user. Fact.

GoMonitor has two subcommands available: monitor and stats

Monitor

The monitor subcommand is the boss.

If run as root user, it starts to collect data about all logged user. It writes this data to an sqlite3 database in the homePath folder. When a user reaches its limit, it logs him out. It collects the data every logIntervalMinutes minutes, and in particular it records all the processes that were running at that moment (and were wasting at least some memory or cpu).

If run as user it stays awake, displays a system tray icon and notifies the user when it starts, when half of the time limit is reached, when he reaches the time limit and when 10 minutes are left before downtime triggers. If the user clicks the tray icon, then he can open a super cool dialog informing the him about the time spent.

Logs are saved in config.app.homePath/gomonitor.log.

You should make both running at system startup. For example you can add a root crontab entry with the @reboot keyword for the root part, and you can just configure it as a startup application for a normal user.

The command is the same:

$ ./gomonitor monitor

By the way, you can read some help text:

$ ./gomonitor -h
$ ./gomonitor monitor -h
$ ./gomonitor stats -h

Statistics

With the stats subcommand you can see some statistics about the user. If run as root you must specify the user and optionally the date (default today). If run as normal user just the date.

# ./gomonitor stats -u rufy -d 2023-09-29
# ./gomonitor stats -u rufy
$ ./gomonitor stats -d 2023-09-29
$ ./gomonitor stats

Uninstall

Simply remove your cloned repo and the config.app.homePath folder.

Just to say

I really didn't have time (at the moment) to implement it the right way. There may be concurrency issues because two different processes uses the same log and database, I'm not sure, I should read carefully all the third library documentation, maybe I'll do it. Just keep in mind that.

TODO

• Better time detection mangement (suspend, hibernate, etc...)
• Better UI
• Better stats
• Maybe add limits per process?