A command-line system monitor tool that produces a frequently-updated list of processes.
Questions tagged [top]
488 questions
95
votes
6 answers
How to change top's sorting back to CPU?
A former coworker did something to top that whenever it runs as root the data is sorted by MEM usage instead of the default CPU usage. According to multiple searches, the man page and even the options within the top console itself (O), just pressing…
user27807
22
votes
1 answer
How to troubleshoot high load, when there are no obvious processes
I'm running Ubuntu 13.10 on a laptop. Recently, after waking from sleep, I noticed the computer was quite warm, checked top and discovered 1.00 load average. I shutdown Chrome, various daemons, no effect.
I rebooted and fired up a terminal and…
Allyl Isocyanate
- 323
21
votes
1 answer
How to stream top snapshot into file?
Is there any way to persist the snapshot of top at that given moment into a file?
I tried
top > top.out
but the contents were nothing like top in STDOUT:
^[[H^[[2J^[(B^[[mtop - 16:09:49 up 18 days, 21:46, 4 users, load average: 2.00, 1.90,…
amphibient
- 12,472
- 18
- 64
- 88
20
votes
1 answer
clear the filters added in `top`
In top I can press o to add filters. My question is how I can clear those filters.
I googled around and it is not easy to find an answer. From the help page, I found that Ctrl + O can be used to display the active filters. There the prompt says…
doraemon
- 421
11
votes
4 answers
Full username in top
On our systems user names can be up to 20 characters long. But the top commands only displays the first 8 characters.
How can I configure top to display the whole user name?
At the moment we use: top procps version 3.2.8 (linux)
But a different top…
guettli
- 1,389
10
votes
3 answers
How to freeze current task order?
I believe I have read some time ago how you can make top stop sorting the tasks so that they stay in the same line (easier to read) but still get updates for their values (in contrast to simply stopping the screen refresh by pressing e.g. k or…
Hauke Laging
- 90,279
9
votes
1 answer
what is tracker-miner-f and how to stop it
I noticed lately that my computer heats up and the fans are louder than ever before and the battery life is shorter, so I rand top to see usage of cpu and ram and i noticed two process that consume almost all of my cpu power
PID USER PR NI …
netrunner
- 105
9
votes
2 answers
Huge CPU load due to high system usage
Tasks: 747 total, 176 running, 560 sleeping, 0 stopped, 11 zombie
Cpu(s): 10.5%us, 89.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 74236420k total, 73285344k used, 951076k free, 12261184k buffers
Swap: 8388600k total, …
user4951
- 10,519
7
votes
3 answers
Start top with particular sorting
I'd like to start top with sorting set to resident memory size, instead of the default CPU usage.
I don't see a way to do that from command line arguments or startup file. Obviously I can't echo "Oq" | top either since I'd prevent top from using the…
9000
- 1,639
4
votes
1 answer
How can I turn off the realtime display of unix command "top"?
I want top to just give me the results when I call it and then exit. How can this be done?
top's manpage does not list any flag for this purpose.
Also, I do not want to use ps -eLf for the purpose.
Lazer
- 35,307
4
votes
2 answers
top: how to cancel current command?
While browsing processes on a shared server in top I accidentally hit the r key which prompted me with renice. I had no clue what this was going to do with my input and found no way to go back.
I tried ^C, ^D, among other things and ended up…
turbulencetoo
- 195
3
votes
3 answers
Can I show process tree for 1 program?
I need to show all processes under a certain program. If I do top -p PID I will only get one program.
I want to type top -p 381 extra_args to get
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES %CPU %MEM TIME+ S COMMAND …
Bret Joseph
- 53
3
votes
3 answers
Excluding users from the top command
I'm trying to use the top command and exclude two users from showing in the iteration I'm sending to the textfile.
I have used the -u='!user' command-line option, but I can only exclude 1 user with it and am not able to use the option more than…
manic_maniac
- 33
- 4
3
votes
1 answer
Appearance of plus (+) in top output
This is the output of my top command.
Tasks: 633 total, 1 running, 380 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 9.9 us, 1.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 65.1 id, 23.9 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 26407128+total, 1078396 free, 31198216 used,…
Cindy Almighty
- 165
2
votes
2 answers
What does SWAP mean in top?
It says
p: SWAP -- Swapped size (kb)
The non-resident portion of a task's address space.
q: RES -- Resident size (kb)
The non-swapped physical memory a task has used.
RES = CODE + DATA.
Okay, what does "non-resident portion"…
user4951
- 10,519