In this post, we will look at a few tools that will help us monitor and determine which processes consume most resources on your Linux machine. Three terminal based tools – atop, htop, and top For the experienced hands, a terminal and “*top” command may be familiar. For those who may not be adept with these commands, read on. If you would like to check out website monitoring tools, read my posts on this topic here and here .
Click below for the audio version of this post
If you would like to check out website monitoring tools, read my posts on this topic here and here.
Back in the days I used Windows, that could be brought up by pushing ctrl+alt+del . This was a tried and tested way to figure out resource usage. Also to find out the naughty and un-responsive processes, that hogged up memory or processor cycles. I have not used Windows for quite a while now, bit I am leaving you with an image from Windows10.
Task Manager in Windows 10. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Incidentally, the machine I am using to post this blog is an AMD Ryzen powered Lenovo Thinkpad that runs dual boot Windows 11/ Linux Manjaro.
Measure Linux system resources
In Linux, like always, there are multiple ways of achieving a similar result. I will cover three terminal based tools below.
“htop” for monitoring linux system resource use
“top” can also explain what processes consume system resources
“atop” is more complex, but very powerful resource management tool
Sometimes, one or two processes can run awry and chew up system resources. This slows the entire computer. That’s where monitoring plays an important role. Case in point: while I was updating this post, Firefox and Dolphin (file manager for KDE desktop) took up a lot or RAM, as seen in the below screenshot.
This post was originally published in August 2021 and has been updated since then.
Links and Resources:
- htop
- atop
- top
- Wikipedia has a wider list of System Monitoring Resources.Back in the day when I used lightweight Window managers like Enlightenment on Bodhi Linux, I used gkrellm extensively, which offered similar tools.
What about graphical Tools?
Linux desktops do offer graphical tools that help in monitoring system resources. KDE Desktop, which I use, has a tool called KDE System Monitor. A screenshot from my desktop with that tool running forms the feature image for this blog post!
KDE System Monitor Showing RAM and CPU usage for a KDE Desktop on Manjaro.
Update March 2022: using vmstat for checking system resource usage
I recently decided to brush up my knowledge of Linux commands, and a familiar yet lesser known command `vmstat` came to mind. Below are some of the ways in which you can use this command to find out how much RAM is being used. You can find the output form my Lenovo Thinkpad.
$ vmstat -s
6990192 K total memory
3474820 K used memory
1533028 K active memory
4361344 K inactive memory
127464 K free memory
84132 K buffer memory
3303776 K swap cache
1048572 K total swap
751992 K used swap
296580 K free swap
Similarly, the `iostat` command gives information on CPU and disk usage.You can see the version of Linux Kernel, the cpu achitecture, disk read and write speed and cpu steal among other information. This post on techmint has some useful information on using the above two commands.
$iostat
Linux 5.16.11-arch1-1 (sanganak-tp) 03/03/22 _x86_64_ (12 CPU)
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
5.89 0.28 6.13 0.04 0.00 87.66
Device tps kB_read/s kB_wrtn/s kB_dscd/s kB_read
nvme0n1 6.66 562.63 54.21 0.00 52507999
Monitoring System Resources Remotely
If you are using a server or a headless machine (Computer without a graphical interface), then you can monitor the resource usage remotely using “*top” via a terminal. You will have to ssh into the server in order to do so. For example, I used this method to check system resources on a storage server from Inception Hosting I have in the United States.
$ ssh Stor Linux inph.vyas 5.10.0-10-amd64 #1 SMP Debian xxx The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Last login: Sat Jan 29 18:54:27 2022 from xx.xxx.xx.xx [email protected]:~$ htop
Using Third Party Monitoring Tools
For the more experienced hands, tools like Grafana, Netdata, or Hetrix Tools might come in handy.
I was recently introduced to the Hetrix Tools Monitoring Agent through this discussion on LowEndTalk.
Note: You can watch the most recent system report of this server by clicking here.
Wrapping up: System Monitoring Tools for Linux
There are several ways by which one can monitor the system resources and use of cpu, disk space, and RAM. As they say, ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat‘. One of the beautiful things about Linux and Open Source world is that there are several ways to achieve the same result. And many great command line tools to achieve that. In this post, we just mentioned a few that barely scratch the surface.