A live, read-only monitoring dashboard for Unraid: btop, nvtop, ctop, and a custom fan-status strip composed in a tmux session that runs on the box itself. The workstation just attaches to it over a single SSH connection, launchable from any XDG app launcher. One click, one keystroke, one window — everything you need to glance at to know the box is healthy.

_{Running in foot on omarchy with the etherial theme.}

Built for Unraid. The tower-side pieces are Unraid-coupled (mdcmd, /mnt/disk* / /mnt/cache / /mnt/user, RAM-FS restored from /boot/config/go). The workstation-side launcher will happily SSH into any Linux host, but the array-status and boot-restore bits assume Unraid.

Shared as a starting point, not a finished product. Fork it, rip out what doesn't match your box, rewire the rest. The generalizable bits — the tmux composition pattern, the hwmon-via-sysfs fan reader, the FAT32-survives-boot install dance via /boot/config/go — are the parts worth lifting even if your stack looks nothing like mine.

Three rows, all running on the Unraid host inside a server-side tmux session:

Anything interactive (lazydocker, lazygit, etc.) was deliberately moved out — this view is pure observability.

The dashboard is a tmux session named dash that lives on the Unraid box:

• tower/bin/tower-dash (on the box) builds that session — the three-row layout, each pane running its monitor in a restart loop — then attaches. It builds once; every later run re-attaches to the warm session.
• workstation/tower-dashboard (on the workstation) is the launcher: it spawns a fresh terminal that runs ssh -t <box> tower-dash. That's the whole client side — one SSH connection, no client-side tmux, no layout logic.

Because the session lives on the box, the monitors stay warm between launches and survive the workstation disconnecting — re-opening is instant. The session lasts until the box reboots (or until tower-dash kill ends it sooner).

Earlier versions built the layout client-side and drove it over send-keys at attach time, which needed a fragile geometry-poll dance to keep the 1-row fan strip from scaling into a fat band. Building the layout on the box, sized to the caller's terminal, removed all of that.

• vs. the Unraid web UI — the WebGUI lives behind a tab and refreshes slowly. This is one keystroke ("Tower Dashboard" in your launcher) and updates in real time. No browser, no bookmark, no auth.
• vs. Glances / Beszel / Netdata — those are excellent dashboards that want a daemon on the box, a port, and (usually) a browser. This is no web daemon and no port: just tmux plus the TUI tools you'd run by hand anyway. Read-only by design.
• vs. ssh root@tower htop — htop is one pane. This is the four panes you actually want, laid out at the right sizes, with the right tool for each (btop for storage I/O, nvtop for GPU, ctop for containers, custom script for fan PWM).

workstation/         # Files that live on the laptop/desktop
  tower-dashboard      # launcher — spawns a terminal, SSHes in, attaches
  tower-dashboard.svg  # icon — symlinked into ~/.local/share/icons/.../apps/
  Tower Dashboard.desktop.in  # XDG launcher entry template (Exec=@BIN_PATH@)
  ssh-config.snippet   # optional SSH ControlMaster block for ~/.ssh/config
tower/               # Files that live on the Unraid host
  bin/                 # tower-dash, fan-status, array-status — into /boot/config/bin/
  config/              # btop.conf, ctop config, sensors-ignore-fans.conf
  go.snippet           # boot-restore lines to append to /boot/config/go
  README.md            # Unraid-side install instructions
install-workstation.sh # Idempotent installer for the workstation side
LICENSE              # MIT

git clone https://github.com/BrettKinny/tower-dashboard ~/Repos/tower-dashboard
~/Repos/tower-dashboard/install-workstation.sh

The installer is idempotent (safe to re-run): it symlinks the launcher script and icon into the right XDG dirs, renders the .desktop entry from its template with an absolute Exec= path (some launchers — notably walker on omarchy — don't resolve ~/.local/bin from unqualified Exec lines), adds an unraid-dash shell alias to ~/.bashrc, and refreshes the desktop database so launchers pick up the new entry.

Then follow the printed steps: append the SSH snippet, optionally export the env vars below, and install the tower side.

See tower/README.md. Summary:

1. Install tmux (NerdTools plugin) and nvtop (nvtop plugin) from the Unraid Apps tab.
2. SCP tower/bin/* to /boot/config/bin/ and tower/config/* into the matching /boot/config/ paths.
3. Drop in static btop + ctop binaries at /boot/config/bin/.
4. Build tmux-256color terminfo into /boot/config/terminfo/ (one-liner).
5. Append tower/go.snippet to /boot/config/go and either reboot or run the snippet lines manually.

Everything machine-specific is reachable via env vars, so you should rarely need to fork.

fan-status defaults match an Asus board with NCT6779 superio + Intel coretemp + 3-intake/2-exhaust fan wiring. To adapt:

ssh root@tower.local fan-status --detect   # lists all hwmon chips + their pwm/fan/temp inputs

Then export overrides on the tower side (e.g. in /etc/profile.d/), or edit the defaults at the top of the script:

Edit disks_filter in tower/config/btop/btop.conf to match your array (Unraid's /etc/fstab doesn't list array mounts, so an explicit filter is required).

The dashboard uses a single SSH connection — it attaches to the tmux session on the box. workstation/ssh-config.snippet has an optional ControlMaster block; it's no longer required (there's only one connection), but it's harmless and still speeds up any other SSH to the box. The launcher pins TERM=xterm-256color for the remote tmux, because the box's RAM-FS won't have terminfo for xterm-ghostty / xterm-kitty and friends.

MIT — see LICENSE.