panda

A terminal UI for Linux system monitoring and Docker container control, written in Rust with ratatui and bollard.

panda has two tabs:

• System — live CPU and memory gradient charts, load average, swap, disk I/O & capacity, network throughput, CPU info, and a process table sorted by resident memory.
• Docker — a selectable container table with per-container CPU/memory charts, container detail, and lifecycle controls.

Requirements

• Linux only. All system metrics come from the /proc and /sys pseudo-filesystems. On other platforms the system tab shows zeros.
• Rust (edition 2024) toolchain to build.
• For the Docker tab: a running Docker daemon and access to its socket (/var/run/docker.sock). Add your user to the docker group, or run panda with elevated privileges. If the socket is unreachable, the Docker tab shows an "unavailable" panel instead of failing.

Build & run

cargo build --release
./target/release/panda

Or during development:

cargo run

Keybindings

Global

Key	Action
mm	Switch between the System and Docker tabs (press m twice)
q	Quit
Esc	Close the current dialog / exit the current mode

System tab

Key	Action
cc	Enter / exit process select mode (press c twice)
↑ / ↓	Scroll the selection through the full list (wraps around)
1–5	Sort by PID / USER / COMMAND / CPU% / RES MEM (press again to flip direction)
0	Reset sort to default (RES MEM, descending)
k	Kill the selected process (asks for confirmation)

The active sort column is marked with a ^ (ascending) or v (descending) arrow in the header, and a scrollbar on the right shows the cursor position.

Docker tab

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Scroll the container selection (wraps around)
1–5	Sort by NAME / IMAGE / STATE / CPU% / MEM (press again to flip direction)
0	Reset sort to default (NAME, ascending)
s	Start the container if stopped, stop it if running
r	Restart the container
p	Pause / unpause the container
k	Kill the container (asks for confirmation)
d	Remove the container, forced (asks for confirmation)
l	View the last logs; ↑/↓ scroll, Esc/l close

Destructive actions & privileges

panda can kill processes and kill/remove Docker containers. These are confirmed via a bottom action bar before running.

• Process kill uses SIGKILL. Killing a process you own needs no extra privilege. If the kernel returns EPERM (a process owned by another user, e.g. root), panda shows an in-app password bar and runs sudo -S kill -9 <pid>.
  • Security note: this captures your sudo password into application memory for the duration of that single action (it is cleared immediately after use). If you prefer not to type your password into panda, run the whole program under sudo instead and skip the prompt.
  • panda will not kill its own process.
• Docker actions target the container's stable ID (not its display name) and are gated only by access to the Docker socket — there is no per-action password prompt.

Notes

• CPU% in tables is the raw value: process CPU is capped at 100%; Docker container CPU can exceed 100% on multi-core hosts. The gradient charts are normalized to 0–100% and are therefore capped.
• Resident memory uses the system page size (sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE)).