TOP Descriptions

PID - process ID of the process

USER - User who is running the process

PR - The priority of the process

NI - Nice value of the process (higher value indicates lower priority)

VIRT - The total amount of virtual memory used

RES - Resident task size

SHR - Amount of shared memory used

S - State of the task. Values are S (sleeping), D (uninterruptible sleep), R (running), Z (zombies), or T (stopped or traced)

%CPU - Percentage of CPU used

%MEM - Percentage of Memory used

TIME+ - Total CPU time used

COMMAND - Command issued
Interacting with TOP

Now that we are able to understand the output from TOP lets learn how to change the way the output is displayed.

Just press the following key while running top and the output will be sorted in real time.

M - Sort by memory usage

P - Sort by CPU usage

T - Sort by cumulative time

z - Color display

k - Kill a process

q - quit

If we want to kill the process with PID 3161, then press “k” and a prompt will ask you for the PID number, and enter 3161.
Command Line Parameters with TOP

You can control what top displays by issuing parameters when you run top.

- d - Controls the delay between refreshes

- p - Specify the process by PID that you want to monitor

-n - Update the display this number of times and then exit

If we want to only monitor the http process with a PID of 3166

$ top -p 3166

If we want to change the delay between refreshes to 5 seconds

$ top -d 5