darksidewalker-ComfyUI-DaSiWa-Nodes/docs/system_monitor.md

DaSiWa System Monitor

A compact, non-intrusive system telemetry bar integrated directly into the ComfyUI top toolbar.

Overview

The System Monitor displays real-time resource utilization in the ComfyUI header area. Its local display controls remain on the monitor itself; the global switch lives at ComfyUI → Settings → Other → DaSiWa → System Monitor. The separate Free Memory button is independent of monitor telemetry.

The current settings are stored in the browser, so they remain active after a ComfyUI page reload:

• Enable System Monitor: the global DaSiWa switch. Off removes the monitor toolbar/floating UI, dock targets, frontend listeners, and backend telemetry polling. On starts and mounts them again.
• Lite: the default compact fixed-width, color-coded toolbar meters. Each meter shows a label, a numeric value, and a proportional background fill representing 0–100% usage.
• Full: a spacious monitor panel with every available metric, its current value and detail, plus a live graph covering the most recent 60 telemetry samples (normally about one minute).
• Dock: choose the top toolbar, left side, or right side from the settings menu. The selection is retained after reload.
• Widget layout: choose horizontal or vertical meter flow. This is especially useful in left/right side docks.
• Widgets: enable or disable individual CPU, memory, disk, I/O, and GPU meters. Every widget is enabled by default and choices are retained after reload.
• Placement: drag the monitor freely anywhere on the ComfyUI canvas. Floating placement uses pixel-aligned coordinates to keep its text sharp. Drop it on the visible top, left, or right target to dock it.

Free Memory toolbar button

The DaSiWa-logo button sits beside the monitor when it is docked in the top toolbar. It remains in the toolbar if the monitor is floating, side-docked, or disabled. Click it to choose:

• Free VRAM: asks ComfyUI to unload its managed models (POST /free with unload_models: true, free_memory: false).
• Free System RAM: unloads managed models and resets ComfyUI's execution cache (unload_models: true, free_memory: true). This is not an operating-system-wide RAM purge.

The request is queued by ComfyUI and processed by its prompt worker; the button does not interrupt an active generation or free memory owned by other processes. Click outside either this menu or the monitor settings menu to close it. Disable the Free Memory button separately at ComfyUI → Settings → Other → DaSiWa → Free Memory → Show Free Memory Button; the preference is browser-local and does not disable telemetry.

Display Modes

Lite (default)

Lite keeps the monitor in the toolbar as compact, content-sized meters. Each chip sizes to its label and value (max-content) so text never clips at any resolution, font, or DPI. It is intended for continuous at-a-glance monitoring while working in ComfyUI.

Use the small grip at the monitor's left edge to float it above the canvas. To dock it again, drag that grip to a visible top, left, or right dock target and release it there. The settings menu provides the same dock controls without dragging.

Full

Full opens a larger panel directly below the monitor controls. It shows all available CPU, memory, disk, and GPU metrics at once, including each metric's detailed value and a graph of the most recent 60 telemetry samples. The settings button remains available above the panel to switch back to Lite or disable the monitor.

Metrics

Metric	Description	Color
CPU	Overall CPU utilization across all threads	Blue (#38bdf8)
RAM	Physical memory usage	Purple (#a78bfa)
SWAP	Swap space (Linux) or Pagefile (Windows)	Amber (#f59e0b)
DISK	System filesystem and, when different, the filesystem containing ComfyUI	Pink (#fb7185)
RD	Read throughput for each displayed filesystem (MB/s)	Green (#34d399)
WR	Write throughput for each displayed filesystem (MB/s)	Pink (#f472b6)
GPU0 Util	GPU 0 compute utilization	Green (#4ade80)
GPU0 VRAM	GPU 0 video memory usage	Cyan (#22d3ee)
GPU0 Temp	GPU 0 temperature in °C	Orange (#fb923c)

Additional GPUs appear as GPU1, GPU2, etc., each with Util, VRAM, and Temp chips.

Tooltips

Hover over any metric chip to see detailed information:

• CPU: Thread count
• RAM/SWAP: Used / Total in human-readable units (MiB/GiB)
• DISK: Device, mount path, used / total
• RD/WR: Mount path and current read/write throughput
• GPU: Device ID, name, and exact VRAM used / total

GPU Support

Platform	Vendor	Detection Method
Linux	NVIDIA	NVML (nvidia-ml-py), nvidia-smi query as fallback
Linux	AMD	rocm-smi JSON output
Linux	Intel	DRM/sysfs device tree
Windows	NVIDIA	NVML (nvidia-ml-py), then nvidia-smi, otherwise CIM Win32_VideoController
Windows	AMD	CIM Win32_VideoController fallback
Windows	Intel	CIM Win32_VideoController fallback

When multiple GPUs of the same vendor exist, each receives a sequential index starting at 0. If a specific GPU tool is unavailable, the system gracefully degrades to generic device enumeration.

On Windows the CIM Win32_VideoController query is expensive (a fresh powershell.exe per call) and its data — adapter name, PNPDeviceID, AdapterRAM — is static, so it is probed once and cached for the lifetime of the monitor instance. A successful non-empty result is reused on every subsequent tick; an empty result is retried on the next tick until an adapter is found. This avoids spawning a powershell process on every telemetry interval.

NVIDIA telemetry uses one NVML session opened on the first sample and kept for the life of the monitor. Spawning nvidia-smi every tick opens a new NVML session each time, and under Docker Desktop / WSL2 on Windows every session opened in the guest leaks NVIDIA driver memory on the host until reboot; queries on one open session do not. If NVML cannot load, the monitor falls back to nvidia-smi, retrying NVML at most every 10 minutes.

Responsive Behavior

When toolbar width is insufficient to display all metrics, lower-priority chips are hidden first. The priority order (highest to lowest):

1. CPU
2. RAM
3. GPU metrics (Util, VRAM, Temp per GPU)
4. SWAP
5. DISK

A ResizeObserver monitors window changes and adjusts visibility dynamically without user interaction. Full mode uses a scrollable panel and collapses to one metric column on narrow screens.

Backend Requirements

• psutil — Cross-platform system metrics (CPU, RAM, swap, disk). Included in project dependencies.
• nvidia-ml-py — NVIDIA telemetry through NVML (installed from requirements.txt; pure Python, harmless without an NVIDIA GPU).
• nvidia-smi — Optional fallback when NVML cannot load, bundled with NVIDIA drivers.
• rocm-smi — Optional, part of ROCm toolkit for AMD GPUs.
• No additional GPU tools required on Windows beyond standard drivers.

API Endpoints

The backend exposes three REST endpoints:

• /dasiwa/system-monitor — Full system snapshot (JSON; returns 503 when disabled)
• /dasiwa/system-monitor/gpus — GPU-specific data only (JSON; returns 503 when disabled)
• POST /dasiwa/system-monitor/enabled — Starts or stops telemetry using { "enabled": true | false }

Updates are broadcast via WebSocket event dasiwa.system_monitor approximately once per second while the monitor is enabled.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Monitor shows "Loading..."	Backend route not registered	Ensure nodes/nodes_system_monitor.py is imported in __init__.py
No GPU metrics shown	Missing GPU query tool	Verify python -c "import pynvml; pynvml.nvmlInit()" or nvidia-smi --query-gpu=index,name --format=csv runs successfully
Swap shows "n/a"	No swap configured	Normal behavior; indicates swap/pagefile is disabled
Panel overlaps other toolbar items	Insufficient toolbar width	Lower-priority metrics auto-hide; check browser developer console for errors

Disabling

Use ComfyUI → Settings → Other → DaSiWa → System Monitor to disable the monitor. This removes every monitor element from the ComfyUI UI, unregisters its frontend event listeners, stops the backend polling thread, and makes snapshot routes return 503 until re-enabled. The preference is browser-local and is synchronized when that browser loads ComfyUI.

For a server that must never start telemetry before a browser connects, set DASWA_SYSTEM_MONITOR to 0, false, no, off, disable, or disabled before starting ComfyUI. The settings switch can still enable it later.

# bash / zsh
export DASWA_SYSTEM_MONITOR=0

# fish
set -x DASWA_SYSTEM_MONITOR 0

Container / sandbox safety

Cloud containers and sandboxes often expose an incomplete /proc (for example, no /proc/vmstat). Every hardware and psutil probe now runs through a guarded wrapper that suppresses the resulting RuntimeWarning and falls back to a safe default, so:

• A missing swap source reports n/a (used/total/percent = null) instead of spitting a per-second RuntimeWarning into the log.
• A failing nvidia-smi/rocm-smi/DRM probe returns an empty GPU list instead of raising.
• The monitor thread never crashes the ComfyUI server because of an unavailable stat.

This is independent of the disable switch above — leaving the monitor on in a container is now quiet.