The *top utility tells the user about all the running processes on the Linux machine.
top
returns:
top - 19:03:57 up 22:39, 1 user, load average: 0.49, 0.68, 0.71 Tasks: 514 total, 2 running, 367 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 1.6 us, 0.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 98.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem : 65980936 total, 21156596 free, 9382376 used, 35441964 buff/cache KiB Swap: 999420 total, 990972 free, 8448 used. 55163492 avail Mem PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3492 peter 20 0 3850948 927040 261616 S 26.8 1.4 26:22.96 Web Content 6724 peter 20 0 5545444 402640 99356 S 4.6 0.6 70:02.94 gnome-shell 6274 peter 20 0 3902648 932180 284928 S 3.6 1.4 29:49.76 Web Content 3291 peter 20 0 4836552 766488 220340 R 3.3 1.2 82:02.60 firefox 9683 peter 20 0 103436 62756 4028 S 2.3 0.1 41:40.82 transmissi+ 12246 root 20 0 16924 5200 4556 S 2.0 0.0 55:45.68 openvpn ...
| Field | Description | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| PID | The process ID of each task | |
| User | The username of task owner | |
| PR | Priority Can be 20(highest) or -20(lowest) | |
| NI | The nice value of a task | |
| VIRT | Virtual memory used (kb) | |
| RES | Physical memory used (kb) | |
| SHR | Shared memory used (kb) | |
| S | Status | There are five types: 'D' = uninterruptible sleep 'R' = running 'S' = sleeping 'T' = traced or stopped 'Z' = zombie |
| %CPU | % of CPU time | |
| %MEM | Physical memory used | |
| TIME+ | Total CPU time | |
| Command | Command name |