Monitor system health with `top` or `htop`

[jbeadling]

Summary

Learn how to monitor system health in real-time using top and htop on a Unix-like operating system. Gain insights into CPU, memory usage, running processes, and other system metrics.

---

Description

• Objective: Acquire the skills to effectively monitor system health, resources, and performance using top and htop.

• Scope:

  • Introduction to top and htop
  • Key metrics displayed (CPU usage, memory, processes, etc.)
  • Using various flags and options for detailed views
  • Best practices for system monitoring

---

Learning Tasks

1. Introduction to top and htop:

   • Learn the basics of top and htop and how they differ.

2. Key Metrics:

   • Understand the key metrics displayed in both utilities, such as CPU usage, memory, running processes, and load averages.

3. Using Flags and Options:

   • Familiarize yourself with various flags and options for sorting, filtering, and getting detailed views.

4. Best Practices:

   • Dive into the best practices for effective real-time system monitoring.

5. Hands-on Practice:

   • Exercise 1: Open top and identify the top 5 CPU-consuming processes.
   • Exercise 2: Use htop to sort processes by memory usage.
   • Exercise 3: Use flags in top to show only specific metrics.
   • Exercise 4: Use htop to kill a specific process.

6. Troubleshooting:

   • Cover common issues that might occur while using top and htop and how to resolve them.

---

Learning Goals

• Develop the ability to monitor system health and performance effectively.
• To diagnose system issues, utilize the top and htop features.
• Implement best practices in real-time system monitoring.

---

Priority

• Medium

[jbeadling]

The top & htop commands are used for monitoring system processes and resource usage in a Unix-like operating system. the htop command is an improved and more user friendly version of top with additional features and an interactive interface.

Below we use top to identify the top 5 CPU-consuming processes, the top command automatically show the top 5 CPU-consuming processes for all cores. It updates in real time.

Below we use htop to sort the process by memory. htop displays process by CPU usage by default so when htop is running you press f6 which opens the sortby menu, you then use the arrow keys to select the "PERCENT_MEM" option. htop will then sort processes by memory usage

Below we use top to do the same thing (sort processes by MEM) by using the -o to specify we want to sort by a different parameter (in this case memory) and the -n to select how many times we want to update the display (in this case 10)

Below we use htop to kill a process, when htop is running simply use the arrow keys to select the specific process you want, press F9 which will open a menus to select which signal you want to send the process, at which point you can send a SIGKILL to that process to kill it.