Lightweight, self-contained Linux® server monitoring tool.
Zero dependencies. No external databases. Single binary. Just deploy and go.
Kula collects system metrics every second by reading directly from /proc and /sys,
stores them in a built-in tiered ring-buffer storage engine, and serves them through a real-time Web UI dashboard and a terminal TUI.
| Metric | What's Collected |
|---|---|
| CPU | Total usage (user, system, iowait, irq, softirq, steal) + core count |
| Load | 1 / 5 / 15 min averages, running & total tasks |
| Memory | Total, free, available, used, buffers, cached, shmem |
| Swap | Total, free, used |
| Network | Per-interface throughput (Mbps), packets/s, errors, drops; TCP errors/s, resets/s, established connections; socket counts |
| Disks | Per-device I/O (read/write bytes/s, reads/s, writes/s IOPS); filesystem usage |
| System | Uptime, entropy, clock sync, hostname, logged-in user count |
| Processes | Running, sleeping, blocked, zombie counts |
| Self | Kula's own CPU%, RSS memory, open file descriptors |
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Linux Kernel │
│ /proc/stat /proc/meminfo /sys/... │
└──────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
│ read every 1s
▼
┌──────────────────┐
│ Collectors │
│ (cpu, mem, net, │
│ disk, system) │
└────────┬─────────┘
│ Sample struct
┌────────────┼────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
┌────────────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌──────────┐
│ Storage │ │ Web │ │ TUI │
│ Engine │ │ Server │ │ Terminal │
└─────┬──────┘ └───┬────┘ └──────────┘
│ │
┌──────────┼─────────┐ └───────────┐ HTTP + WebSocket
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
┌─────────┬─────────┬─────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ Tier 1 │ Tier 2 │ Tier 3 │ │ Dashboard │
│ 1s │ 1m │ 5m │ │ (Browser) │
│ 250 MB │ 150 MB │ 50 MB │ └───────────────┘
└─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘
Ring-buffer binary files
with circular overwrites
Data is persisted in pre-allocated ring-buffer files per tier. Each tier file has a fixed maximum size — when it fills up, new data overwrites the oldest entries. This gives predictable, bounded disk usage with no cleanup needed.
- Tier 1 — Raw 1-second samples (default 250 MB)
- Tier 2 — 1-minute aggregates: averaged CPU & network, last-value gauges (default 150 MB)
- Tier 3 — 5-minute aggregates, same logic (default 50 MB)
The HTTP server on backend exposes a REST API and a WebSocket endpoint for live streaming. Authentication is optional - when enabled, it uses Argon2id hashing with salt and session cookies. It is worth adding that Kula truly respects your privacy. It works on closed networks and does not make any calls to external services.
The frontend is a single-page application embedded in the binary. Built on Chart.js with custom SVG gauges, it connects via WebSocket for live updates and falls back to history API for longer time ranges. Features include:
- Interactive zoom with drag-select (auto-pauses live stream)
- Focus mode to show only selected graphs
- Grid / stacked list layout toggle
- Alert system for clock sync, entropy issues, overload
Kula was built to have everything in one binary file. You can just upload it to your server and not worry about installing anything else because Kula has no dependencies. It just works out of the box! It is a great tool when you need to quickly start real-time monitoring.
Example installation methods for amd64 (x86_64) GNU/Linux.
Check Releases for ARM and RISC-V packages.
wget https://github.com/c0m4r/kula/releases/download/0.7.4/kula-0.7.4-amd64.tar.gz
echo "6e1a6a389b446d599032f1b3e9940e706fdf820efad25fcac0606ba6a581fac2 kula-0.7.4-amd64.tar.gz" | sha256sum -c || rm kula-0.7.4-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xvf kula-0.7.4-amd64.tar.gz
cd kula
./kula# With persistent storage
docker run -d --name kula --pid host --network host -v /proc:/proc:ro -v kula_data:/app/data c0m4r/kula:latest
docker logs -f kula
# Temporary, no persistent storage
docker run --rm -it --name kula --pid host --network host -v /proc:/proc:ro c0m4r/kula:latestwget https://github.com/c0m4r/kula/releases/download/0.7.4/kula-0.7.4-amd64.deb
echo "1444c1ec923c2df04ccc50955401392fc177cff1af57e91982b70d4549b52035 kula-0.7.4-amd64.deb" | sha256sum -c || rm kula-0.7.4-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i kula-0.7.4-amd64.deb
systemctl status kulawget https://github.com/c0m4r/kula/releases/download/0.7.4/kula-0.7.4-aur.tar.gz
echo "dffc7bf3adbb2476f690d494c6f086d64088c10ac4705663a6488849e96478c8 kula-0.7.4-aur.tar.gz" | sha256sum -c || rm kula-0.7.4-aur.tar.gz
tar -xvf kula-0.7.4-aur.tar.gz
cd kula-0.7.4-aur
makepkg -sigit clone https://github.com/c0m4r/kula.git
cd kula
bash addons/build.sh# 1. Copy and edit config (optional)
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml
# 2. Start the server
./kula serve
# Dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:8080
# 3. Or use the terminal UI
./kula tui# Generate password hash
./kula hash-password
# Add the output to config.yaml under web.authInit system files are provided in addons/init/:
# systemd
sudo cp addons/init/systemd/kula.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl enable --now kula
# OpenRC
sudo cp addons/init/openrc/kula /etc/init.d/
sudo rc-update add kula default
# runit
sudo cp -r addons/init/runit/kula /etc/sv/
sudo ln -s /etc/sv/kula /var/service/All settings live in config.yaml. See config.example.yaml for defaults.
# Lint + test suite
bash ./addons/check.sh
# Build dev (Binary size: ~11MB)
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -o kula ./cmd/kula/
# Build prod (Binary size: ~8MB)
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -ldflags="-s -w" -buildvcs=false -o kula ./cmd/kula/To safely update only the Go modules used by Kula to their latest minor/patch versions, and prune any unused dependencies:
go get -u ./...
go mod tidy# Run unit tests with race detector
go test -race ./...
# Run the full storage benchmark suite (default: 3s per bench)
bash addons/benchmark.sh
# Shorter run for quick iteration
bash addons/benchmark.sh 500ms
# Python scripts formatter and linters
black addons/*.py
pylint addons/*.py
mypy --strict addons/*.pybash addons/build.sh cross # builds amd64, arm64, riscv64bash addons/build_deb.sh
ls -1 dist/kula-*.debbash addons/build_aur.sh
cd dist/aur && makepkg -sibash addons/build_rpm.sh
ls -1 dist/kula-*.rpmbash addons/docker/build.sh
docker compose -f addons/docker/docker-compose.yml up -dGNU Affero General Public License v3.0
- Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
- Chart.js library licensed under MIT