How to Monitor Linux VPS with Glances: Lightweight Web & Terminal Dashboard

Why Glances is Superior to Traditional Top and Htop

While classic command-line utilities like top and htop provide basic process lists, they fail to provide comprehensive visibility into network I/O, disk read/write throughput, file system capacity, and Docker container performance on a single screen. Glances is an open-source system monitoring tool written in Python that delivers an interactive terminal UI and a responsive web dashboard that streams live server metrics.

Step 1: Installing Glances via Official Package Manager

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y glances python3-bottle

Step 2: Running Glances in Web Server Mode

Launch Glances as a background systemd service so you can monitor your server from any browser:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/glances.service

[Unit]
Description=Glances System Monitoring Web Server
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/glances -w -B 127.0.0.1 -p 61208
Restart=always
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now glances.service

Step 3: Securing Behind Nginx Reverse Proxy with Basic Auth

Bind Glances to port 61208 and secure it with Nginx HTTP Basic Authentication to prevent unauthorized viewers from inspecting system processes.