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Thread: Top command in linux?

  1. #1
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    Top command in linux?

    Hi all

    Someone in my office is asking how does the "top" command works in linux. They have googled and found nothing.

    Can any linux fundus comment on this?

    Thanks

    T
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  2. #2
    AO's Filibustier Cheap Scotch Ron's Avatar
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    It reads the /proc data
    In God We Trust....Everything else we backup.

  3. #3
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    Ok, how does someone use that command, would you mind giving me an example for the newbie :P
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  4. #4
    AO's Filibustier Cheap Scotch Ron's Avatar
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    Cider,

    Pretty self explanatory.

    To run it, you simply type 'top' at the command shell and it will give you a real time snapshot of your processes, cpu and vm stats. It does this by reading the data that gets logged to /proc. There are also other related commands.

    type 'man top' for an explanation of the fields as well as related commands.

    If I knew what your colleague was trying to accomplish, perhaps I could provide more precise suggestions.

    Processes: 57 total, 3 running, 2 stuck, 52 sleeping... 249 threads 09:11:03
    Load Avg: 0.12, 0.18, 0.17 CPU usage: 5.96% user, 8.72% sys, 85.32% idle
    SharedLibs: num = 8, resident = 80M code, 1612K data, 5068K linkedit.
    MemRegions: num = 7894, resident = 341M + 20M private, 210M shared.
    PhysMem: 326M wired, 667M active, 116M inactive, 1118M used, 930M free.
    VM: 8859M + 371M 53053(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

    PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
    445 top 8.0% 0:00.85 1 18 29 828K 200K 1420K 18M
    434 bash 0.0% 0:00.01 1 14 19 296K 184K 936K 18M
    433 login 0.0% 0:00.10 1 17 55 332K 188K 1112K 19M
    432 Terminal 3.5% 0:01.85 3 103- 158 2388K+ 19M 9100K+ 363M
    428 mdworker 0.1% 0:00.38 4 71 38 780K 5468K 2372K 31M
    398 Preview 0.0% 0:04.32 3 101 199 5312K 20M 14M 383M
    387 Microsoft 1.1% 0:23.90 12 179+ 694 89M+ 46M 141M+ 571M+
    266 AppleSpell 0.0% 0:01.47 1 37 30 584K 7908K 4200K 34M
    148 Alerts Dae 0.0% 0:00.85 2 65 132 2328K 10M 5020K 329M
    145 Safari 6.2% 8:54.09 14 270 1007 76M 26M 115M 487M
    137 Microsoft 0.0% 0:00.08 1 60 41 416K 408K 2312K 291M
    134 Microsoft 1.0% 3:40.00 16 218+ 671 37M+ 41M 82M+ 470M+
    133 Adium 0.0% 0:28.59 10 187 576 14M 29M 33M 418M
    132 SpeechReco 0.0% 0:31.18 2 136 131 7476K 4044K 8760K 336M
    131 SpeakableI 0.0% 0:40.02 1 123 129 1600K 10M 4960K 342M
    129 SpeechFeed 0.0% 0:08.40 2 135 140 2480K 11M 6040K 330M
    126 SpeechSynt 0.0% 0:00.08 1 75 44 472K 6816K 2416K 290M
    125 Microsoft 0.0% 0:09.14 2 91 155 4464K 12M 11M 349M
    117 Finder 0.0% 0:04.50 7 161+ 243 5316K+ 21M 16M+ 373M+
    116 SystemUISe 0.2% 0:12.23 7 226 288 3792K 12M 9504K 353M
    115 coreaudiod 0.0% 0:07.52 2 113 72 3656K 1264K 4692K 23M
    113 pboard 0.0% 0:00.00 1 15 23 168K 184K 588K 19M
    111 ATSServer 0.0% 0:03.44 2 109 139 1232K 7072K 5724K 71M
    110 Dock 0.0% 0:02.75 3 125 239 3420K 12M 10M 342M
    109 UserEventA 0.0% 0:00.36 2 121 81 700K 1760K 2168K 20M
    108 Spotlight 0.0% 0:00.22 2 80 75 1104K 8180K 4068K 292M
    104 AirPort Ba 0.0% 0:00.09 3 79 93 660K 8460K 3008K 323M
    In God We Trust....Everything else we backup.

  5. #5
    THE Bastard Sys***** dinowuff's Avatar
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    09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0

  6. #6
    PHP/PostgreSQL guy
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    He should be able to 'man top' and if it's a recent distribution of linux, he even might have htop which is a lot more streamlined, both of which you run at the command line as already mentioned.
    We the willing, led by the unknowing, have been doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do just about anything with almost nothing.

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