How to create a dynamic single bar graph

newdles

Hello.

I'm trying to figure out how to create a dynamic single bar graph that increases and decreases horizontally. What I want this for is to check server load and then return the result in an image format but just one solid color.

You can see what I mean here - http://www.sxc.hu

Look on the left hand side in the middle portion of the page. That's what I'm trying to figure out how to do and if it would be a ton of trouble or not.

Anyone that has any input I would be greatful to hear.

Thanks,
Brandon

drew010

you could use gd to draw an image based on the load, but what they are doing because its much more efficient and simpler is just specifying the height and width of the tiny image (http://www.sxc.hu/img/l3.gif).
this is the html they have to make it the size it is now (when i am looking at it)
<img src="img/l3.gif" height=8 width=66>

newdles

Yes, I noticed they were using an image as well. What I didn't understand was how they're doing it. The image is dynamicly adjusted according to server load percentage yet I just haven't got the slightest clue how to recreate that. I'm quite new to php and still learning but that just caught my attention and seemed very interesting.

drew010

if you are running a linux system, you can easily fetch the cpu load stats by running 'uptime'
it will return the 1, 5, and 15 minute average.

bash-2.05a$ uptime
3:44am up 11:16, 1 user, load average: 4.68, 4.10, 4.45

im not sure exactly how the adjust their graph based on that load data though. but you could easily enough write a script to parse that file and make your own function to adjust the size of the graph.

newdles

Alrighty, thanks. I'll look into it and read around a bit and see if I can't figure something out.