Linux Process Monitoring Tools

Posted on the 16 March 2021 by Satish Kumar @satish_kumar86

We can view the native performance of various processes in an OS by using the following tools:

To view a dynamic real-time view of the running processes in an OS, use the following command:

$ top
Output:
top - 15:52:40 up 275 days,  1:27,  2 users,  load average: 5.33, 4.59, 4.53
Tasks: 353 total,  10 running, 342 sleeping,   1 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 32.5 us, 25.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 41.8 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.6 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem : 24688724 total,  2805744 free,  1733244 used, 20149736 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 34552824 total, 34061312 free,   491512 used. 20726872 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 1631 www-data  20   0  434648  88640  25600 R  69.2  0.4   0:02.09 php
 1642 www-data  20   0  431700  84768  25708 R  59.6  0.3   0:01.80 php
 1389 www-data  20   0 4945088 204120 102236 S  52.6  0.8   0:13.24 apache2
 1647 www-data  20   0  408076  59836  25592 R  33.1  0.2   0:01.00 php
 1651 www-data  20   0  410308  62120  25748 R  32.1  0.3   0:00.97 php
 1633 www-data  20   0  398944  51540  25400 S  24.8  0.2   0:00.75 php
 1655 www-data  20   0  405964  58124  25348 R  22.5  0.2   0:00.68 php
 1644 www-data  20   0  396896  50316  25700 S  22.2  0.2   0:00.67 php
 1649 www-data  20   0  396896  50088  25472 S  21.2  0.2   0:00.64 php
  612 www-data  20   0 4895016 234944 183188 R  20.5  1.0   0:09.28 apache2
 1085 www-data  20   0 4812596 142684  96404 S  19.9  0.6   0:03.93 apache2
 1653 www-data  20   0  396896  50216  25600 S  18.9  0.2   0:00.57 php
 1350 www-data  20   0 4815848 137208  88508 S  17.9  0.6   0:01.83 apache2
 1657 www-data  20   0  396636  50116  25676 S  16.2  0.2   0:00.49 php
 1408 www-data  20   0 4886932 140960  95820 S  13.9  0.6   0:01.19 apache2
 1660 www-data  20   0  402604  54920  25552 R  13.6  0.2   0:00.41 php
 1516 www-data  20   0 4887744 103544  59588 S  13.2  0.4   0:00.63 apache2
 1662 www-data  20   0  395992  47992  25552 R  12.3  0.2   0:00.37 php
 1405 www-data  20   0 4818300 102112  52156 R  10.9  0.4   0:00.58 apache2
 1406 www-data  20   0 4889816 113576  65876 S  10.6  0.5   0:01.25 apache2
32289 www-data  20   0 4938324 347348 251720 S   9.6  1.4   0:20.38 apache2
 1077 www-data  20   0 4894916 241332 188880 S   5.3  1.0   0:03.95 apache2
 1518 www-data  20   0 4892348 129204  79324 S   4.0  0.5   0:01.66 apache2
 1519 www-data  20   0 4888024  98812  54260 S   3.3  0.4   0:00.31 apache2
  374 www-data  20   0 4891276 322388 272732 S   3.0  1.3   0:09.00 apache2

An explanation of thetopcommand generated output is as follows:

The$topcommand displays a lot ofinformationabout the running system.

The first line of the display is shown as follows:

top - 15:52:40 up 275 days,  1:27,  2 users,  load average: 5.33, 4.59, 4.53

The description of fields in the first line is as follows:

  • Current time
  • System uptime
  • Number of users logged in
  • Load average of5,10, and15minutes, respectively

The second line is shown as follows:

Tasks: 353 total,  10 running, 342 sleeping,   1 stopped,   0 zombie

This line shows the summary of tasks or processes. It shows the total number of all the processes, which includes the total number of running, sleeping, stopped, and zombie processes. The third line is shown as follows:

%Cpu(s): 32.5 us, 25.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 41.8 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.6 si,  0.0 st

This line shows information about CPU usage as a % in different modes as follows:

  • * us (user): CPU usage in%for running (un-niced) user processes
  • * sy (system): CPU usage in%for running kernel processes
  • * ni (niced): CPU usage in%for running niced user processes
  • * wa (IO wait): CPU usage in%waiting for IO completion
  • * hi (hardware interrupts): CPU usage in%for serving hardware interrupts
  • * si (software interrupts): CPU usage in%for serving software interrupts
  • * st (time stolen): CPU usage in%for time stolen for this VM by the hypervisor

The fourth line is shown as follows:

KiB Mem : 24688724 total,  2805744 free,  1733244 used, 20149736 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 34552824 total, 34061312 free,   491512 used. 20726872 avail Mem

This line provides information about memory usage. It shows the physical memory that is used, free, available, and used for buffers. The next line shows the swap memory that is available, used, free, and cached.

After this line, we see the table of values with the following columns:

  • PID: This is the ID of the process
  • USER: This is the user that is the owner of the process
  • PR: This is the priority of the process
  • NI: This is theNICEvalue of the process
  • VIRT: This is the virtual memory used by the process
  • RES: This is the physical memory used for the process
  • SHR: This is the shared memory of the process
  • S: This indicates the status of the process:S= sleep,R= running, andZ= zombie (S)
  • %CPU: This is the%of CPU used by this process
  • %MEM: This is the%of RAM used by the process
  • TIME+: This is the total time of activity of this process
  • COMMAND: This is the name of the process

Let’s take a look at the performance monitoring tools iostat, vmstat, and sar:

To view the statistics of the CPU and the input/output device’s utilization, use the following command:

$ iostat
Output:
root@app:/home/satish$ iostat
Linux 4.4.0-116-generic (app)   Wednesday 26 May 2021   _x86_64_        (12 CPU)

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
          19.78    0.00    4.90    0.08    0.00   75.24

Device:            tps    kB_read/s    kB_wrtn/s    kB_read    kB_wrtn
loop0             0.00         0.00         0.00          5          0
scd0              0.00         0.00         0.00         96          0
sda              13.21        35.38       121.96  840773629 2898636144

root@app:/home/satish$

Shows only CPU statistics:

$ iostat -c

Shows onlydiskstatistics:

$ iostat -d

To view the virtual memory statistics, use the following command:

$ vmstat
Output:
root@app:/home/satish$ vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 3  0 491524 8364608 8665900 6561112    0    0     3    10    0    0 20  5 75  0  0
root@app:/home/satish$
root@app:/home/satish$

This shows various event counters and memory statistics:

$ vmstat -s

Runs for every one second stop after executing for five intervals:

$ vmstat -t 1 5

This will show the CPU activity report three times every 2 seconds:

$ sar -u 2 3
Output:
root@app:/home/satish$ sar -u 2 3
Linux 4.4.0-116-generic (app)   Wednesday 26 May 2021   _x86_64_        (12 CPU)

05:50:51  IST     CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait    %steal     %idle
05:50:53  IST     all     16.26      0.00     15.72      0.00      0.00     68.02
05:50:55  IST     all      1.83      0.00      1.42      0.00      0.00     96.75
05:50:57  IST     all      0.96      0.00      1.42      0.00      0.00     97.62
Average:        all      6.36      0.00      6.19      0.00      0.00     87.44
root@app:/home/satish$