procps/top.1

.\" This file Copyright 1992 Robert J. Nation 
.\" (nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com)
.\" It may be distributed under the GNU Public License, version 2, or
.\" any higher version.  See section COPYING of the GNU Public license
.\" for conditions under which this file may be redistributed.
.\"
.\" Modified 1994/04/25 Michael Shields <mjshield@nyx.cs.du.edu>
.\" Cleaned up, and my changes documented.  New `.It' macro.  Edited.
.\" modified 1996/01/27 Helmut Geyer to match my changes.
.
.de It
.TP 0.5i
.B "\\$1 "
..
.TH TOP 1 "Feb 1 1993" "Linux" "Linux User's Manual"
.SH NAME
top \- display top CPU processes
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B top
.RB [ \- ]
.RB [ d
.IR delay ]
.RB [ p
.IR pid ]
.RB [ q ]
.RB [ c ]
.RB [ C ]
.RB [ S ]
.RB [ s ]
.RB [ i ]
.RB [ n
.IR iter ]
.RB [ b ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B top
provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time.  It
displays a listing of the most CPU-intensive tasks on the system, and
can provide an interactive interface for manipulating processes.
It can sort the tasks by CPU usage, memory usage and runtime.
.N top
can be better configured than the standard top from the procps suite.
Most features can either be selected by an interactive command or by 
specifying the feature in the personal or system-wide configuration
file. See below for more information.
.PP
.SH "COMMAND\-LINE OPTIONS"
.It d
Specifies the delay between screen updates.  You can change this with
the
.B s
interactive command.
.It p
Monitor only processes with given process id.
This flag can be given up to twenty times. This option is neither
available interactively nor can it be put into the configuration file.
.It q
This causes
.B top
to refresh without any delay. If the caller has superuser priviledges,
top runs with the highest possible priority.
.It S
Specifies cumulative mode, where each process is listed with the CPU
time that it
.I as well as its dead children
has spent.  This is like the
.B -S
flag to
.BR ps (1).
See the discussion below of the
.B S
interactive command.
.It s
Tells
.B top
to run in secure mode.  This disables the potentially dangerous of the
interactive commands (see below).  A secure
.B top
is a nifty thing to leave running on a spare terminal.
.It i
Start
.B top
ignoring any idle or zombie processes. See the interactive command
.B i
below.
.It C
display total CPU states in addition to individual CPUs. This option
only affects SMP systems.
.It c
display command line instead of the command name only. The default
behaviour has been changed as this seems to be more useful.
.It n
Number of iterations. Update the display this number of times and then exit.
.It b
Batch mode. Useful for sending output from top to other programs or to a file.
In this mode, 
.B top
will not accept command line input. It runs until it produces the number of
iterations requested with the
.B n
option or until killed. Output is plain text suitable for display on a dumb
terminal.
.
.SH "FIELD DESCRIPTIONS"
.B top
displays a variety of information about the processor state.  The
display is updated every 5 seconds by default, but you can change that
with the
.B d
command-line option or the
.B s
interactive command.
.It "uptime"
This line displays the time the system has been up, and the three load
averages for the system.  The load averages are the average number of
process ready to run during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.  This line is
just like the output of
.BR uptime (1).
The uptime display may be toggled by the interactive 
.B l
command.
.It processes
The total number of processes running at the time of the last update.
This is also broken down into the number of tasks which are running,
sleeping, stopped, or undead. The processes and states display may be
toggled by the 
.B t
interactive command.
.It "CPU states"
Shows the percentage of CPU time in user mode, system mode, niced tasks,
and idle.  (Niced tasks are only those whose nice value is negative.)
Time spent in niced tasks will also be counted in system and user time,
so the total will be more than 100%.  The processes and states display
may be
toggled by the
.B t
interactive command.
.It Mem
Statistics on memory usage, including total available memory, free
memory, used memory, shared memory, and memory used for buffers. The
display of memory information may be toggled by the
.B m
interactive command.
.It Swap
Statistics on swap space, including total swap space, available swap
space, and used swap space.  This and
.B Mem
are just like the output of
.BR free (1).
.It PID
The process ID of each task.
.It PPID
The parent process ID each task.
.It UID
The user ID of the task's owner.
.It USER
The user name of the task's owner.
.It PRI
The priority of the task.
.It NI
The nice value of the task.  Negative nice values are higher priority.
.It SIZE
The size of the task's code plus data plus stack space, in kilobytes,
is shown here.
.It TSIZE
The code size of the task. This gives strange values for kernel
processes and is broken for ELF processes.
.It DSIZE
Data + Stack size. This is broken for ELF processes.
.It TRS
Text resident size.
.It SWAP
Size of the swapped out part of the task.
.It D
Size of pages marked dirty.
.It LC
Last used processor.  (That this changes from time to time is not
a bug; Linux intentionally uses weak affinity.  Also notice that
the very act of running top may break weak affinity and cause more
processes to change current CPU more often because of the extra
demand for CPU time.)
.It RSS
The total amount of physical memory used by the task, in kilobytes, is
shown here. For ELF processes used library pages are counted here, for
a.out processes not.
.It SHARE
The amount of shared memory used by the task is shown in this column.
.It STAT
The state of the task is shown here. The state is either
.B S
for sleeping,
.B D
for uninterruptible sleep,
.B R
for running,
.B Z
for zombies, or
.B T
for stopped or traced. These states are modified by trailing
.B <
for a process with negative nice value,
.B N
for a process with positive nice value,
.B W
for a swapped out process (this does not work correctly for kernel
processes).
.It WCHAN
depending on the availablity of either 
.I /boot/psdatabase
or the kernel link map
.I /boot/System.map
this shows the address or the name of the kernel function the task
currently is sleeping in.
.It TIME
Total CPU time the task has used since it started.  If cumulative mode
is on, this also includes the CPU time used by the process's children
which have died.  You can set cumulative mode with the
.B S
command line option or toggle it with the interactive command
.BR S . 
The header line will then be changed to 
.BR CTIME .
.It %CPU
The task's share of the CPU time since the last screen update, expressed
as a percentage of total CPU time per processor.
.It %MEM
The task's share of the physical memory.
.It COMMAND
The task's command name, which will be truncated if it is too long to be
displayed on one line.  Tasks in memory will have a full command line,
but swapped-out tasks will only have the name of the program in
parentheses (for example, "(getty)").
.It "A , WP"
these fields from the kmem top are not supported.
.
.SH "INTERACTIVE COMMANDS"
Several single-key commands are recognized while
.B top
is running.  Some are disabled if the
.B s
option has been given on the command line.
.It space
Immediately updates the display.
.It ^L
Erases and redraws the screen.
.It "h\fR or \fB?"
Displays a help screen giving a brief summary of commands, and the
status of secure and cumulative modes.
.It k
Kill a process.  You will be prompted for the PID of the task, and the
signal to send to it.  For a normal kill, send signal 15.  For a sure,
but rather abrupt, kill, send signal 9.  The default signal, as with
.BR kill (1),
is 15,
.BR SIGTERM .
This command is not available in secure mode.
.It i
Ignore idle and zombie processes.  This is a toggle switch.
.It I
Toggle between Solaris (CPU percentage divided by total number of CPUs)
and Irix (CPU percentage calculated solely by amount of time) views.
This is a toggle switch that affects only SMP systems.
.It "n\fR or \fB#"
Change the number of processes to show.  You will be prompted to enter
the number.  This overrides automatic determination of the number of
processes to show, which is based on window size measurement.  If 0 is
specified, then top will show as many processes as will fit on the
screen; this is the default.
.It q
Quit.
.It r
Re-nice a process.  You will be prompted for the PID of the task, and
the value to nice it to.  Entering a positve value will cause a process
to be niced to negative values, and lose priority.  If root is running
.BR top ,
a negative value can be entered, causing a process to get a higher than
normal priority.  The default renice value is 10.  This command is not
available in secure mode.
.It S
This toggles cumulative mode, the equivalent of
.BR "ps -S" ,
i.e., that CPU times will include a process's defunct children.  For
some programs, such as compilers, which work by forking into many
seperate tasks, normal mode will make them appear less demanding than
they actually are.  For others, however, such as shells and
.BR init ,
this behavior is correct.  In any case, try cumulative mode for an
alternative view of CPU use.
.It s
Change the delay between updates.  You will be prompted to enter the
delay time, in seconds, between updates.  Fractional values are
recognized down to microseconds.  Entering 0 causes continuous updates.
The default value is 5 seconds.  Note that low values cause nearly
unreadably fast displays, and greatly raise the load.  This command is
not available in secure mode.
.It "f\fR or \fBF"
Add fields to display or remove fields from the display. See below for
more information.
.It "o\fR or \fBO"
Change order of displayed fields. See below for more information.
.It l
toggle display of load average and uptime information.
.It m
toggle display of memory information.
.It t
toggle display of processes and CPU states information.
.It c
toggle display of command name or full command line.
.It N
sort tasks by pid (\fIn\fPumerically).
.It A
sort tasks by age (newest first).
.It P
sort tasks by CPU usage (default).
.It M
sort tasks by resident memory usage.
.It T
sort tasks by time / cumulative time.
.It W
Write current setup to 
.IR ~/.toprc .
This is the recommended way to write a top configuration file.
.
.SH The Field and Order Screens
After pressing 
.BR f ,
.BR F ,
.B o
or
.B O
you will be shown a screen specifying the field order on the top line
and short descriptions of the field contents. The field order string
uses the following syntax: If the letter in the filed string
corresponding to a  field is upper case, the field will be displayed.
This is furthermore indicated by an asterisk in front of the field
description.
The order of the fields corresponds to the order of the letters in the
string. 
 From the field select screen you can toggle the display of a field by
pressing the corresponding letter. 
 From the order screen you may move a field to the left by pressing
the corresponding upper case letter resp. to the right by pressing the
lower case one.
.
.SH Configuration Files
Top reads it's default configuration from two files,
.I /etc/toprc
and
.IR ~/.toprc .
The global configuration file may be used to restrict the usage of top
to the secure mode for non-priviledged users. If this is desired, the
file should contain a 's' to specify secure mode and a digit d (2<=d<=9)
for the default delay (in seconds) on a single line.
.
The personal configuration file contains two lines. The first line
contains lower and upper letters to specify which fields in what
order are to be displayed. The letters correspond to the letters in the
Fields or Order screens from top. As this is not very instructive, it is
recommended to select fields and order in a running top process and to
save this using the 
.I W
interactive command. 
.
The second line is more interesting (and important). It contains
information on the other options. Most important, if you have saved a
configuration in secure mode, you will not get an insecure top without
removing the lower 's' from the second line of your 
.IR ~/.toprc .
A digit specifies the delay time between updates, a capital 'S'
cumulative mode, a lower 'i' no-idle mode, a capital 'I' Irix view. As
in interactive mode, a lower 'm', 'l', and 't' suppresses the display
of memory, uptime resp. process and CPU state information.
Currently changing the default sorting order (by CPU usage) is not 
supported.
.
.SH NOTES
This
.BR proc -based
.B top
works by reading the files in the
.B proc
filesystem,
mounted on
.IR /proc .
If
.I /proc
is not mounted,
.B top
will not work.
.PP
.B %CPU
shows the cputime/realtime percentage in the period of time between 
updates.  For the first update, a short delay is used, and
.B top
itself dominates the CPU usage.  After that,
.B top
will drop back, and a more reliable estimate of CPU usage is available.
.PP
The
.B SIZE
and
.B RSS fields don't count the page tables and the
.B task_struct
of a process; this is at least 12K of memory that is always resident.
.B SIZE
is the virtual size of the process (code+data+stack).
.PP
Keep in mind that a process must die for its time to be recorded on its
parent by cumulative mode.  Perhaps more useful behavior would be to
follow each process upwards, adding time, but that would be more
expensive, possibly prohibitively so.  In any case, that would make
.BR top 's
behavior incompatible with
.BR ps .
.
.SH FILES
.I /etc/toprc 
The global configuration file. 
.I ~/.toprc
The personal configuration file.
.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR ps (1),
.BR free (1),
.BR uptime (1),
.BR kill (1),
.BR renice (1).
.
.SH
BUGS
If the window is less than about 70x7,
.B top
will not format information correctly.
 Many fields still have problems with ELF processes.
 the help screens are not yet optimized for windows with less than 
25 lines
.
.SH AUTHOR
.B top
was originally written by Roger Binns, based on Branko Lankester's
<lankeste@fwi.uva.nl> ps program.
Robert Nation <nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com> re-wrote it
significantly to use the proc filesystem, based on Michael K. Johnson's
<johnsonm@redhat.com> proc-based ps program.
Michael Shields <mjshield@nyx.cs.du.edu> made many changes, including
secure and cumulative modes and a general cleanup.
Tim Janik <timj@gtk.org> added age sorting and the ability to monitor
specific processes through their ids.

Helmut Geyer <Helmut.Geyer@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de>
Heavily changed it to include support for configurable fields and other
new options, and did further cleanup and use of the new readproc interface.

The "b" and "n" options contributed by George Bonser <george@captech.com> 
for CapTech IT Services.

Please send bug reports to <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>