| TOP(1) | MidnightBSD General Commands Manual | TOP(1) |
top — display and
update information about the top cpu processes
top |
[-abCHIijnPpqSTtuvxz]
[-d count]
[-J jail]
[-m mode]
[-o field]
[-p pid]
[-s time]
[-U uid]
[number] |
top displays the top processes on the
system and periodically updates this information. If standard output is an
intelligent terminal (see below) then as many processes as will fit on the
terminal screen are displayed by default. Otherwise, a good number of them
are shown (around 20). Raw cpu percentage is used to rank the processes. If
number is given, then the top
number processes will be displayed instead of the
default.
top makes a distinction between terminals
that support advanced capabilities and those that do not. This distinction
affects the choice of defaults for certain options. In the remainder of this
document, an “intelligent” terminal is one that supports
cursor addressing, clear screen, and clear to end of line. Conversely, a
“dumb” terminal is one that does not support such features. If
the output of top is redirected to a file, it acts
as if it were being run on a dumb terminal.
The options are as follows:
-a-b-C-C flag is passed it toggles between
“raw cpu” mode and “weighted cpu” mode,
showing the “CPU” or the “WCPU” column
respectively.-d
count-H-I-i-J
jail-j.-j-m
modecpu and io.
Default is cpu.-n-o
field-P-p
pid-qtop to -20 so that it will run faster. This
can be used when the system is being very sluggish to improve the
possibility of discovering the problem. This option can only be used by
root.-S-s
time-T-ttop process itself.-U
username-utop
will read as much of the file /etc/passwd as is
necessary to map all the user id numbers it encounters into login names.
This option disables all that, while possibly decreasing execution time.
The uid numbers are displayed instead of the names.-v-w-zBoth count and number fields can be specified as “infinite”, indicating that they can stretch as far as possible. This is accomplished by using any proper prefix of the keywords “infinity”, “maximum”, or “all”. Boolean flags are toggles. A second specification of any of these options will negate the first.
When top is running in “interactive
mode”, it reads commands from the terminal and acts upon them
accordingly. In this mode, the terminal is put in “CBREAK”, so
that a character will be processed as soon as it is typed. Almost always, a
key will be pressed when top is between displays;
that is, while it is waiting for time seconds to
elapse. If this is the case, the command will be processed and the display
will be updated immediately thereafter (reflecting any changes that the
command may have specified). This happens even if the command was incorrect.
If a key is pressed while top is in the middle of
updating the display, it will finish the update and then process the
command. Some commands require additional information, and the user will be
prompted accordingly. While typing this information in, the user's erase and
kill keys (as set up by the command
stty(1)) are recognized,
and a newline terminates the input.
These commands are currently recognized (^L refers to control-L):
toptop show one final display and then immediately
exit.top process.The top few lines of the display show general information about the state of the system, including the last process id assigned to a process (on most systems), the three load averages, the current time, the number of existing processes, the number of processes in each state (sleeping, running, starting, zombies, and stopped), and a percentage of time spent in each of the processor states (user, nice, system, and idle). It also includes information about physical and virtual memory allocation.
The remainder of the screen displays information about individual
processes. This display is similar in spirit to
ps(1) but it is not exactly
the same. PID is the process id, JID, when displayed, is the
jail(8) ID corresponding to
the process, USERNAME is the name of the process's owner (if
-u is specified, a UID column will be substituted
for USERNAME), PRI is the current priority of the process, NICE is the
nice(1) amount, SIZE is the
total size of the process (text, data, and stack), RES is the current amount
of resident memory, SWAP is the approximate amount of swap, if enabled
(SIZE, RES and SWAP are given in kilobytes), STATE is the current state (one
of “START”, “RUN” (shown as “CPUn”
on SMP systems), “SLEEP”, “STOP”,
“ZOMB”, “WAIT”, “LOCK”, or the
event on which the process waits), C is the processor number on which the
process is executing (visible only on SMP systems), TIME is the number of
system and user cpu seconds that the process has used, WCPU, when displayed,
is the weighted cpu percentage (this is the same value that
ps(1) displays as CPU), CPU
is the raw percentage and is the field that is sorted to determine the order
of the processes, and COMMAND is the name of the command that the process is
currently running (if the process is swapped out, this column is marked
“<swapped>”).
If a process is in the “SLEEP” or “LOCK” state, the state column will report the name of the event or lock on which the process is waiting. Lock names are prefixed with an asterisk “*” while sleep events are not.
Mem: 61M Active, 86M Inact, 368K Laundry, 22G Wired, 102G Free
ARC: 15G Total, 9303M MFU, 6155M MRU, 1464K Anon, 98M Header, 35M Other
15G Compressed, 27G Uncompressed, 1.75:1 Ratio, 174M Overhead
Swap: 4096M Total, 532M Free, 13% Inuse, 80K In, 104K Out
These stats are only displayed when the ARC is in use.
TOPtop.kill(1), ps(1), stty(1), getrusage(2), humanize_number(3), mem(4), renice(8)
William LeFebvre, EECS Department, Northwestern University
The command name for swapped processes should be tracked down, but this would make the program run slower.
As with ps(1),
things can change while top is collecting
information for an update. The picture it gives is only a close
approximation to reality.
| November 18, 2021 | midnightbsd-3.1 |