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Monitor System Processes Using Htop Command

Htop is an interactive process viewer for Linux that provides a user-friendly way to monitor system processes and resource usage in real-time. It displays CPU and memory usage, load average, and detailed information on running processes such as PID, memory/CPU usage, and owner. Htop allows sorting processes, filtering searches, and managing processes by sending signals like kill or suspend. It is useful for troubleshooting performance issues and monitoring system health by identifying resource-intensive processes.

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Kalkidan Abiyu
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37 views

Monitor System Processes Using Htop Command

Htop is an interactive process viewer for Linux that provides a user-friendly way to monitor system processes and resource usage in real-time. It displays CPU and memory usage, load average, and detailed information on running processes such as PID, memory/CPU usage, and owner. Htop allows sorting processes, filtering searches, and managing processes by sending signals like kill or suspend. It is useful for troubleshooting performance issues and monitoring system health by identifying resource-intensive processes.

Uploaded by

Kalkidan Abiyu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Monitor System Processes Using htop Command

What is the Htop Linux Command?


htop is an interactive process viewer for Linux and Unix-like systems that provides a
real-time, user-friendly way to monitor running processes and system resource usage.
Think of it as a much more advanced and colorful version of the classic top command.

The whole window above can be split up into three sections for the ease of our
understanding.
 The top-left section comprises the CPU and memory usage information.
 The top-right section provides info about load average and uptime.
 The rest of the information contains real-time data of processes with stats like
priority, CPU and memory consumption, etc.
CPU
Starting from the top left, there is a CPU line that shows the percentage of CPU being used. For a single-
core CPU, there will be one line for it. In the case of multi-core CPUs, there will be n number of lines
depending on the number of CPU cores. In any case, if the CPU percentage is near 0 marks then it means
the CPU is not having much load and if it approaches 100 for a long time, it means the CPU is under load.

Color coding of CPU usage lines: The lines indicating CPU and Memory usage have a color-coding of
CPU.

Following colors indicate the type of process:-


 Red = Kernel process
 Green = Normal user process
 Blue = Low priority process

MEMORY
This part tells memory being consumed by the process running on the server; this is denoted by the
number of memory used out of total memory.

Color coding of Memory usage lines:

 Green: Used memory pages


 Blue: Buffer pages
 Yellow: Cache pages

LOAD AVERAGE
It is the average of computational work performed by the CPU. 1.0 on a single core CPU would mean 100
percent utilization, similarly, 2.0 on a dual-core CPU represents 100% CPU usage.

The load average contains three values. The first number is a minute average (0.00 in the figure above),
the second number is 5 minutes average (0.01 in the above figure) while the third number is fifteen
minutes average (0.05 in the figure).
PROCESS INFORMATION
The information below shows the information about processes running on your server.

As shown in the above figure the following words denote:

 PID: Unique Process ID.


 USER: Process Owner.
 VIRT: Virtual memory being consumed by the process
 %CPU: The percentage of the processor time used by the process.
 %MEM: The percentage of physical RAM used by the process.
 COMMAND: The name of the command that started the process.

HTOP FOOTER
The htop footer contains its menu command.

These commands can be used to do various functions for e.g. F6 Sort By can be used to

Sort the process via CPU usage and memory usage.

Key Features of htop:


 Interactive interface: Navigate through processes using keyboard arrows, scroll wheel,
or mouse.
 Real-time updates: Watch CPU, memory, disk, and network usage dynamically change.
 Color-coded display: Easily identify CPU hogs and resource-intensive processes.
 Process filtering and search: Find specific processes quickly using filters and search
bar.
 Process management: Send signals to processes, including kill, suspend, and nice.
 System overview: Monitor overall CPU, memory, swap, uptime, and load average.
 Multiple sorting options: Sort processes by various criteria like CPU usage, memory
usage, PID, and more.
 Configuration options: Customize the display to your preferences, including columns,
colors, and refresh rate.

Benefits of using htop:


 Troubleshooting performance issues: Quickly identify processes causing high CPU,
memory, or disk usage.
 Monitoring system health: Keep an eye on overall resource utilization and prevent
performance bottlenecks.
 Managing running processes: Easily kill slow or unresponsive processes, freeing up
resources.
 Diagnosing application problems: Pinpoint processes associated with application
crashes or errors.
 Learning about system behavior: Gain insights into resource consumption patterns of
different processes.

CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, htop is a useful command-line tool in the Linux environment to determine the
cause of load by each process. It is similar to Task Manager in the Windows OS environment. It
can be used to troubleshoot and kill a process that is utilizing excessive server resources.

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