 |
» |
|
|
|
NAMEtop — display and update information about the top processes on the system SYNOPSIStop
[-s
time]
[-d
count]
[-q]
[-u]
[-h]
[-n
number]
[-f
filename] DESCRIPTIONtop
displays the top processes on the system
and periodically updates the information.
Raw
CPU
percentage is used to rank the processes. Optionstop
recognizes the following command-line options:
- -s time
Set the delay between screen updates to
time
seconds.
The default delay between updates is 5 seconds. - -d count
Show only
count
displays, then exit.
A display is considered to be one update of the screen.
This option is used to select the number of displays
to be shown before the program exits. - -q
This option runs the
top
program at the same priority as if it is executed via a
nice -20
command so that it will execute faster (see
nice(1)).
This can be very useful in discovering any system problem
when the system is very sluggish.
This option is accessibly only to users who have appropriate privileges. - -u
User
ID
(uid) numbers are displayed instead of usernames.
This improves execution speed by eliminating the additional time required
to map uid numbers to user names. - -h
Hides the individual CPU state information for systems
having multiple processors. Only the average CPU status
will be displayed. - -n number
Show only
number
processes per screen.
Note that, if
number
is greater than the maximum number
of processes that can be displayed per screen, this option
is ignored. But when used with
-f
option, there is no limit
on the maximum number of processes that can be displayed. - -f filename
Output is redirected to
filename.
By default this option will redirect 16 processes.
Screen-Control CommandsWhen displaying multiple-screen data,
top
recognizes the following keyboard screen-control commands:
- j
Display next screen if the current screen is not the last screen. - k
Display previous screen if the current screen is not the first screen. - t
Display the first (top) screen.
Program TerminationTo exit the program and resume normal user activities, type
q
at any time. Display DescriptionThree general classes of information are displayed by
top:
- System Data:
The first few lines at the top of the display
show general information about the state of the system, including:
System name and current time. Load averages in the last one, five, and fifteen minutes of all
the active processors in the system. Number of existing processes and the number of processes in each state
(sleeping, waiting, running, starting, zombie, and stopped). Percentage of time spent in each of the processor states
(user, nice, system, idle, interrupt and swapper)
per active processor on the system. Average value for each of the active processor states
(only on multi-processor systems).
- Memory Data
Includes virtual and real memory in use
(with the amount of memory considered "active" in parentheses)
and the amount of free memory. - Process Data
Information about individual processes on the system.
When process data cannot fit on a single screen,
top
divides the data into two or more screens.
To view multiple-screen data, use the
j,
k,
and
t
commands described previously.
Note that the system- and memory-data displays are present in each
screen of multiple-screen process data. Process data is displayed in a format similar to that used by
ps(1):
- CPU
Processor number on which the process is executing
(only on multi-processor systems). - TTY
Terminal interface used by the process. - PID
Process
ID
number. - USERNAME
Name of the owner of the process.
When the
-u
option is specified, the user
ID
(uid) is displayed instead of
USERNAME. - PRI
Current priority of the process. - NI
Nice value ranging from -20 to +20. - SIZE
Total size of the process in kilobytes.
This includes text, data, and stack. - RES
Resident size of the process in kilobytes.
The resident size information is, at best, an approximate value. - STATE
Current state of the process.
The various states are
sleep,
wait,
run,
idl,
zomb,
or
stop. - TIME
Number of system and
CPU
seconds the process has consumed. - %WCPU
Weighted
CPU
(central processing unit) percentage. - %CPU
Raw
CPU
percentage.
This field is used to sort the top processes. - COMMAND
Name of the command the process is currently running.
EXAMPLEStop
can be executed with or without command-line options.
To display five screens of data at two-second intervals
then automatically exit, use:
AUTHORtop
was developed by HP and William LeFebvre of Rice University. |
Printable version
