Skip to Main Content
How Linux Works
book

How Linux Works

by Brian Ward
May 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
368 pages
8h 44m
English
No Starch Press
Content preview from How Linux Works

Tracking Individual Processes

You saw how to use ps in Processes for listing process characteristics at any given time. ps is good for getting a snapshot of the current processes, but it does little to tell you how processes change over time. Using ps alone, it's not terribly easy to pick out processes that are using too much CPU time or memory.

The top program displays the current system status and many of the fields that you might see in a ps listing, but it also updates the display every second. By default, top shows the most active processes (that is, those currently taking up the most CPU time).

You can send commands to top with keystrokes. These are some of the most important commands:

spacebar

Updates the display immediately

M

Sorts by current ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

How Linux Works, 2nd Edition

How Linux Works, 2nd Edition

Brian Ward
Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, Arnold Robbins
Linux in Action

Linux in Action

David Clinton
Linux Under the Hood

Linux Under the Hood

Sander van Vugt

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781593270353Errata