ARTICLE

Using Top More Efficiently
Contributed by Mulyadi Santosa in Misc on 2006-03-28 04:05:13
Page 5 of 5

H. Conclusion

There are numerous tricks to use top more efficiently. The key is by knowing what you really need and possibly a little good understanding of Linux low level mechanism. The statistics isn't always correct, but at least it is helpful as a overall measurement. All these numbers are gathered from /proc, so make sure it is mounted first!

Reference:

  • Understanding The Linux Kernel, 2nd edition.
  • Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt inside kernel source tree.
  • Linux kernel source.

Article Index
Using Top More Efficiently
Fast or slow update?
Fields we need
Multi view are better than one?
Conclusion
 
Discussion(s)
Network engineer
Written by kourosh on 2008-01-28 13:32:24
Hope you don't mind but not enough examples given
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Network Engineer
Written by Mark on 2008-02-07 10:43:18
Quote:
Hope you don't mind but not enough examples given




Congratulations on the most polite criticism ever delivered on the web. Well, at least in my travels, I've never seen a critique of an article so gently worded. Anyway, Kudos to you for your politeness.

As it turns out, I beg to differ with your critique. IMHO, the article had sufficient examples: Just enough to whet your appetite and get you reading the man page for more.
Discuss! Reply!

RE:
Written by Ritwik Malvi on 2008-02-11 17:14:16
Quote:
Quote:
Hope you don't mind but not enough examples given




Congratulations on the most polite criticism ever delivered on the web. Well, at least in my travels, I've never seen a critique of an article so gently worded. Anyway, Kudos to you for your politeness.

As it turns out, I beg to differ with your critique. IMHO, the article had sufficient examples: Just enough to whet your appetite and get you reading the man page for more.




Is there any way to monitor just the top 10 processes in Linux(like using the -n switch in Unixware)?
Discuss! Reply!

RE:
Written by Ritwik Malvi on 2008-02-11 17:15:41
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Hope you don't mind but not enough examples given




Congratulations on the most polite criticism ever delivered on the web. Well, at least in my travels, I've never seen a critique of an article so gently worded. Anyway, Kudos to you for your politeness.

As it turns out, I beg to differ with your critique. IMHO, the article had sufficient examples: Just enough to whet your appetite and get you reading the man page for more.




Is there any way to monitor just the top 10 processes in Linux(like using the -n switch in Unixware)?




I meant the top 10 processes consuming CPU (the top 10 processes from the top -S command)
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Thanks!
Written by Anonymous bin Ich on 2008-04-04 03:17:25
Good article.

It would be nice if you added once sentence descriptions to all the Fields of top.

(Ok, I know that higher NICE value means lower priority, but what about higher PR value?)
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Stop the loop?
Written by Sonya* on 2008-04-21 05:12:51
I typed top -b and it was indefintely loop as you said, but how can I stop this loop? I had to kill the putty session to quit it. Thank you.
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Processes and Loop
Written by Jorge Chollet on 2008-04-22 18:53:02
Quote:
I typed top -b and it was indefintely loop as you said, but how can I stop this loop? I had to kill the putty session to quit it. Thank you.




@Ritwik Malvi: You can enter top in interactive mode (just type 'top' without parameters) and type 'n', then enter the number of processes you want to see.

@Sonya: Just press Ctrl+C. I use Putty myself at work.
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a
Written by mark on 2008-05-06 19:24:16
Quote:
I typed top -b and it was indefintely loop as you said, but how can I stop this loop? I had to kill the putty session to quit it. Thank you.





I have the same problem. How do you stop top??
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a
Written by Mark on 2008-05-06 19:26:17

I just found your reply to use control c to stop top.

That works great! Thanks!!
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top process states
Written by pavan on 2008-05-15 09:05:04
can anybody tell what is "SWN" state of a process
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Monitor process via command name?
Written by viettrung on 2008-07-04 10:21:40
Hi,

Thank you for a useful article.

I just want to know whether it is possible to monitor a process via its (command) name rather than its process identifier? If so, how?

Regards,

.viettrung.
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