atop is an open source, ASCII full-screen performance monitor, similar to the top command, but atop only shows the active system-resources and processes, and the deviations since the previous interval.
atop shows the occupation of the most critical hardware resources (from a performance point of view) on system level, i.e. cpu, memory, disk and network.
atop also shows which processes are responsible for the indicated load with respect to cpu- and memory load on process level. Disk load is shown if per process “storage accounting” is active in the kernel or if the kernel patch `cnt’ has been installed. Network load is only shown per process if the kernel patch `cnt’ has been installed.
Every interval (default: 10 seconds) information is shown about the resource occupation on system level (cpu, memory, disks and network layers), followed by a list of processes which have been active during the last interval (note that all processes that were unchanged during the last interval are not shown, unless the key ‘a’ has been pressed). If the list of active processes does not entirely fit on the screen, only the top of the list is shown (sorted in order of activity). The intervals are repeated till the number of samples (specified as command argument) is reached, or till the key ‘q’ is pressed in inter‐ active mode.
Features include:
- Resource consumption by all processes.
- Utilization of all relevant resources.
- Permanent logging of resource utilization.
- Highlight critical resources.
- Scalable window width.
- Resource consumption by individual threads.
- Watch activity only.
- Watch deviations only.
- Accumulated process activity per user.
- Accumulated process activity per program.
- Network activity per process.
Website: www.atoptool.nl
Support: atop
Developer: Gerlof Langeveld
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
atop is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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