A command-line system monitor tool that produces a frequently-updated list of processes.

learn more… | top users | synonyms

8
votes
6answers
3k views

How to make a process invisible to other users?

How could you launch a process and make it invisible to the top command? The process is started by a normal user (not root), and should not be visible to other normal users.
13
votes
3answers
15k views

How to monitor CPU/memory usage of a single process?

I would like to monitor one process's memory / cpu usage in real time. Similar to top but targeted at only one process, preferably with a history graph of some sort.
6
votes
1answer
616 views

top output: cpu usage > 100%

Here is the top output which I gathered: I noticed that top is showing vlc's cpu usage is > 100%. Can anybody please justify me why it is showing like this, whether this is a bug in top ...
1
vote
1answer
310 views

htop reporting much higher memory usage than free or top

The following three outputs were taken essentially simultaneously: top: top - 02:54:36 up 2 days, 13:50, 3 users, load average: 0.05, 0.05, 0.09 Tasks: 181 total, 1 running, 179 sleeping, 0 ...
4
votes
1answer
2k views

Why does top report the incorrect CPU usage?

I have a machine with Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 visible as 16 logical cores (8 with HT). If I run something to eat CPU time (single threaded) top correctly reports 100% CPU usage for the process but ...
9
votes
1answer
2k views

Why the value of VSIZE in top is different from the value of VSZ (Virtual set size) in ps?

I know VSZ in ps is for the total address space allocated for the app and is sometimes aliased as vsize (mentioned in man page of ps on linux), but what's the definition of VSIZE in top? This top ...
3
votes
2answers
984 views

100.0%sy with poor disk performance

I have RHEL 5.4 kernel 2.6.18-164.el5 and I am experiencing very bad disk performance that happens randomly during working with Oracle. Nothing appears in the logs. When it happens, I see one CPU ...
2
votes
2answers
213 views

How to interpret this top command

top - 04:36:16 up 32 days, 2:33, 1 user, load average: 251.72, 250.54, 231.19 Tasks: 785 total, 249 running, 522 sleeping, 2 stopped, 12 zombie Cpu(s): 8.9%us, 90.5%sy, 0.4%ni, 0.0%id, ...
2
votes
2answers
877 views

Top and ps not showing the same cpu result

This is linked to this question. When I run top I get the following result: pid 3038 is using 18% cpu, however when running the result is 5.5%. And this number does not appear to be changing ...
1
vote
1answer
35 views

iotop but for particular disk?

Is there a tool like iotop but for monitoring IO on specific volumes? (Or perhaps I missed a way to filter iotop?) If not is there any way to get at this information via (say)/proc? (dstat etc. ...