How to view a specific process in top

Question

Are there any relatively strightforward options with top to track a specific process?
Ideally by identifying the process by a human readable value? e.g. chrome or java.

In other words, I want to view all the typical information top provides, but for the results to be filtered to the parameters provided i.e.. 'chrome' or 'java'

Answer 1

From my other answer here, you could do something like,

top -p `pgrep "java"`

Answer 2

You can simply use grep:

NAME
       grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - print lines matching a pattern

SYNOPSIS
       grep [OPTIONS] PATTERN [FILE...]
       grep [OPTIONS] [-e PATTERN | -f FILE] [FILE...]

DESCRIPTION
       grep  searches  the  named  input  FILEs (or standard input if no files are named, or if a single
       hyphen-minus (-) is given as file name) for lines containing a match to the  given  PATTERN.   By
       default, grep prints the matching lines.

Run following command to get output which you want (ex-chrome):

top | grep chrome

Here we are using grep with pipelines | so top & grep run parallel ; top output given to grep (as input) and grep chrome filters matching lines chrome until top stopped.

Answer 3

top -p `pgrep -d "," java`

Explanation:

1. top -p pid1,pid2: show multiple process information, the pid should be separated by ,
2. pgrep -d "," java: print the pids of all java program, the pids are separated by a newline by default. use the -d "," to separate it by , as required by the top.

If you see error like top: -p argument missing, it means no java program is running, i.e. the pgrep has no output.

Answer 4

In OpenBSD top, just press g and enter the command name you'd like to filter on.

In top on e.g. Ubuntu, press o and enter e.g. COMMAND=chrome to only show entries from the COMMAND column that are equal to chrome.

On Linuxes that uses the same top implementation as Ubuntu, read the FILTERING in a Window section in the top manual.

Answer 5

Other good answers have been provided, but I made a script some time ago, which I named ptop, that serves me well:

#!/bin/sh
top -p $(pidof "$@" |sed s#\ #,#g) 2>/dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  echo No processes with the specified name\(s\) were found
fi

This supports multiple process names to be specified (like ptop bash chrome) and provides a nicer error message in case there is/are no processes with any of the specified names running.

Answer 6

If you want to stay in top and keep all other processes in view for context, you can press L to search for your process:

Locate string chrome

This will highlight any process with chrome in the name, and bring it into view. Use & to go to the next match.

You can press c to switch between showing the process name and the full command.

Answer 7

You can also use a filter in top to isolate specific processes. Press 'O' to bring up the filter prompt. Then type a filter formatted as FIELD=value. For example, to filter all tmux processes, use:

COMMAND=tmux

Use '=' to reset filters. See the section titled 'FILTERING' in the top man page.

Answer 8

On a Linux terminal:

Type:

top

Then hit the o key, this will prompt you to add a filter. You can then apply a filter to the "COMMAND" column, for example if you wanted to see the "bash" process you can input as a filter:

COMMAND=bash  

This will show only command bash.
Man top (1) for more information, look for FILTER.

Answer 9

Once you know the PID of the process you wish to track (through running ps auxw |grep your_process) run top in batch mode:

top -b -n 1 -p 1234 | tail -n 1

Where 1234 is your process PID

This approach is better for tracking. It is safer than using grep on a name, more straightforward and uses less resources.

Answer 10

When your top does not know the -p option (top: invalid option -- 'p'), then you can get a similar result using the batch mode with -b:

top -b | grep java