Top command tricks

Posted by Ravikiran K.S. on January 1, 2006

top command on-screen options

1 - displays all CPU details (SMP view) m - displays memory usage details u - for selection of users l - load averages t - (toggle) task/cpu stats z - toggle color display O - sort by any field T - sort tasks by time/cumulative time. o - change display order f - add/remove field > - move sort field to right < - move sort filed to left c - (toggle) show command line for each process i - (toggle) show idle tasks W - write configuration file q - quit k - kill a process r - change priority of process s - set update interval A - display multiple views of top output (each view has different combination of columns) G - change the display to one of the given view = - remove all current applied restrictions - - Show or hide current window _ - Show all invisible windows.

.toprc

It should consist of two lines. The default may be something like:

AbcDgHIjklMnoTP|qrsuzyV{EFWX 5ci

  • In the first line you specify what is displayed and the letters are the same as explained in man page and in help
  • A - PID - process id
  • D - USER username
  • H - PRI piority
  • I - NI nice value
  • M - SIZE size, virtual image
  • T - RSS Resident set size
  • P - SHARE share pages
  • V - process status
  • W - TIME
  • E - CPU? (not sure)

  • F - Mem? (not sure)

  • In the second line you specify the behavior of top. In the example

  • [number] - how many seconds for refresh, standard is 5
  • c - show command line

  • i ignore zombie processes

command line arguments

-p - given as: -pN1 -pN2 … or -pN1, N2 [,…] up to 20 pids. Monitors only mentioned processes.