3 min read

On Top, Finally

April 15, 2021

top is a beautiful little tool to display the system processes that I use quite often to afford me a glimpse into how two important system resources are being used: CPU and memory.

I think most developers are familiar with the top command as one of a handful of Unix commands that everyone knows. Usually, it’s invoked and watched as it dynamically updates every few seconds, and that is usually enough of a view to get an idea of what is consuming system resources and what possibly needs to be killed. To be honest, this is what I do many times, as well.

In this little post, I’m going to quickly cover the ways that I use it the most.

Andiamo!

All of the following are entered interactively (after entering the top command):

  1. Sorting:

    • By default, top sorts by CPU usage. To sort by memory, press M.
    • Press P to reset back to CPU usage.
    • Press O to choose the column to sort.
    • To toggle through the headers, press < or >, although it can be difficult to tell which column has been sorted!

  2. Press k to kill a process.

  3. Press 1 to display all CPUs in the header. Press again to revert.

  4. Press c to display absolute path of the command. Press again to revert.

  5. Press n to limit the number of processes displayed (analogous to head).

  6. Press W to write the current configuration to $HOME/.toprc. For instance:

    • Open top.
    • Press M to sort by memory.
    • Press n then 20 to only display 20 processes at a time.
    • Press W to save.
    • Open top again to see that it’s saved the configuration.

    ( To revert, either save a different configuration or remove the $HEAD/.toprc file. )

     $ cat ~/.toprc
 top's Config File (Linux processes with windows)
 Id:i, Mode_altscr=0, Mode_irixps=1, Delay_time=3.0, Curwin=0
 Def     fieldscur=ķ')*+,-./012568<>?ABCFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghij
         winflags=193844, sortindx=21, maxtasks=20, graph_cpus=0, graph_mems=0
         summclr=1, msgsclr=1, headclr=3, taskclr=1
 Job     fieldscur=(Ļ@<*+,-./012568>?ABCFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghij
         winflags=193844, sortindx=0, maxtasks=0, graph_cpus=0, graph_mems=0
         summclr=6, msgsclr=6, headclr=7, taskclr=6
 Mem     fieldscur=<MBN34'()*+,-./0125689FGHIJKLOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghij
         winflags=193844, sortindx=21, maxtasks=0, graph_cpus=0, graph_mems=0
         summclr=5, msgsclr=5, headclr=4, taskclr=5
 Usr     fieldscur=)+,-./1234568;<=>?@ABCFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghij
         winflags=193844, sortindx=3, maxtasks=0, graph_cpus=0, graph_mems=0
         summclr=3, msgsclr=3, headclr=2, taskclr=3
 Fixed_widest=0, Summ_mscale=0, Task_mscale=0, Zero_suppress=0

Ok, to be honest, I don’t really use that last one, but it’s useful to know.

Also, the header information in top is really useful for the following reasons:

  1. See the load average over 1, 5 and 15 minute periods.
  2. See the number of processes that are running and sleeping.
  3. See the number of zombie processes, if any.
  4. See the percentage of CPU of idle processes and processes that are waiting, such as waiting on I/O to complete before resuming.
  5. See the total amount of system memory, including RAM, swap and disk caching.