Linux Performance: top Command

 The top command is an essential tool in any Linux administrator's toolbelt.  Let's take a deeper look at the command.

First thing you can do is get the version of top we are using

If you just type top with no options you will get the following information, the information will update every 3 seconds by default.  The top area is a summary of resources and CPU usage while the bottom portion are information about the processes.  The information is sort by CPU utilization by default.

Press q to quit, you can also run the top command in batch mode by specifying how many times you want it to run by typing the command like this top -b -n1 the command uses the -b option for batch and -n for the number of iterations, in this case it's one

As you can see it only runs once and you get your prompt back, you use your mouse to scroll back up. You can also write the results to a file like this top -b -n1 > top-stats