SYSBOARD

A single-file PHP system dashboard for Linux.

This project is intentionally simple:

• one file: dashboard.php
• no API endpoint
• no JavaScript fetch loop
• no framework
• server-rendered HTML on each page load

The page refreshes itself every 15 seconds and also provides a manual refresh link.

Features

SYSBOARD shows:

• disk usage
• inode usage
• memory usage
• swap usage
• CPU usage per core
• uptime and load average
• boot time
• network traffic
• TCP connection summary
• listening ports
• disk I/O
• temperatures when available
• top processes by CPU
• top processes by memory

Requirements

Component	Minimum
PHP	7.4+
OS	Linux
Web server	Apache, Nginx, lighttpd, or PHP built-in server

Notes:

• The dashboard reads Linux-specific files such as /proc/stat, /proc/net/dev, /proc/meminfo, and /proc/diskstats.
• It will not work correctly on Windows or macOS.
• Some metrics depend on local tools like ss, ps, and df.
• Temperature data may be unavailable on VMs or systems without exposed thermal sensors.

Installation

Apache

sudo cp dashboard.php /var/www/html/dashboard.php

Open:

http://YOUR_SERVER/dashboard.php

Nginx

Place dashboard.php in your web root and make sure PHP-FPM is configured for .php files.

lighttpd

Place dashboard.php in your web root and enable PHP support.

Local test

php -S 127.0.0.1:8000

Then open:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/dashboard.php

How It Works

dashboard.php collects system metrics during the request, then renders the full HTML page directly.

There is no split between page rendering and metrics collection. Every refresh is a normal page request.

High-level flow:

Browser requests dashboard.php
        |
        v
PHP collects system data
  - /proc/mounts
  - /proc/meminfo
  - /proc/stat
  - /proc/net/dev
  - /proc/diskstats
  - /sys/class/thermal/*
  - ss / ps / df
        |
        v
PHP renders HTML
        |
        v
Browser reloads every 15s

CPU, network traffic, and disk I/O are sampled twice with a 1 second interval so the dashboard can calculate rates instead of only cumulative counters.

Design Goals

The current implementation is optimized for:

• easy deployment
• low conceptual overhead
• one-file maintenance
• straightforward debugging

It is not optimized for:

• multi-user scale
• historical metric storage
• push updates
• authentication or role separation

Important Behavior

Refresh model

The page uses:

• <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="15">
• a manual refresh link

That means the entire page reloads every 15 seconds.

Data sampling

CPU, network throughput, and disk I/O require two samples. The page waits about 1 second during rendering to calculate those values.

Missing metrics

Some cards may show fallback text such as:

• No sensors
• No port data
• No active TCP connections

That is expected when the host does not expose that data or the required command is unavailable.

Security

This dashboard exposes host-level operational data.

Do not publish it directly to the public internet without access control.

At minimum, put it behind one of:

• HTTP Basic Auth
• VPN
• reverse-proxy authentication
• internal-only network access

Files

.
├── dashboard.php
└── README.md

Validation

Basic local checks:

php -l dashboard.php
php dashboard.php > /tmp/dashboard.html

License

Add your preferred license if you plan to distribute this publicly.