Use htop to monitor and manage system processes
Most people familiar with Linux have used the top command line utility to see what process is taking the most CPU or memory. There’s another utility called htop that is much easier to use for normal tasks and it provides far more functionality.
The wonderful thing about htop is that it will show you your usage per CPU, as well as a meaningful text graph of your memory and swap usage right at the top. It provides more information at first glance and makes it easier for the end user. Not to mention it’s far more colorful, making it easier on the eyes.
Most distributions have htop in their repos. So you can apt-get, yum, or user zypper to install it. If you do not have it in your distribution’s repo’s you can always install it from source here: http://htop.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=downloads
Once installed, just type htop at a terminal to launch it, and notice the great text-mode graph at the top of the display:
You can use your Up and Down arrow keys to select a process, and then you can kill it with the F9 key if you’d like, or you can change the priority by using the F7 and F8 keys. (note that you’ll have to be root to give anything really high priority). The F3key will allow you to search for a process and F5 will display htop in a tree like format, showing the parent and child processes.
You can also use the F6 key to change the default sort column really easily:
and that’s it for htop.
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Tags: htop, process management