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Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

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Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#51

Post by bilegeek »

imrehg wrote: post #13

I've relatively recently migrated over to using btop[0], and it's the kind of modern interface, useful and informative, that I needed. As others mention it - it seems to shows the Watts used as well :) (and network, and GPU, and disks,....) [0]: https://github.com/aristocratos/btop

I like btop, but there are downsides:

1.) No zram/zswap statistics. (Though htop only supports zram also.)

2.) No ZFS statistics breakdown.

3.) Doesn't support Arc GPU yet.

4.) I can't disable the disk fill bars, which makes the I/O rate graphs extremely squished unless the console window is very large.

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#52

Post by hinkley »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #31

I appreciate the note on virtual memory not being reliable. This is what Windows task manager reports by default and it's terrible. Resident size is the most reliable metric. Anything else can be wrongfully inflated by things like harmless memory mapped files that won't actually hurt anything. eg. memory map 2GB of logfiles, it'll only be paged in if reading that portion of the logfile so isn't really using memory bu…

Resident set size is not the amount of memory that the process wants, it’s how much the OS is willing to give it. So once memory pressure kicks in it stops being representative. I’ve seen this misunderstanding lead to bad decisions a few times. I even went so far to remove this value form charts because a team member was going left when he should have gone right.

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#54

Post by shellwizard »

zepearl wrote: post #34

For the ones that don't know "nmon", have a look at it as well! (press "h" to see the list of available monitors - press it again to make it go away, press "q" to quit) https://nmon.sourceforge.io/pmwiki.php Especially disk throughput and I/O (keys "d" & "D") can be very useful.

I know it from some AIX machines that we have at job, also topas comes to mind

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#56

Post by FpUser »

WD-42 wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nails and hammers are great but most of us have moved on to screws and screwdrivers. What good does it do to stick your head in the sand? CPUs are great for orchestrating work, GPUs are great for actually doing the work.

Did you write this comment using your gpu?

Actually modern rendering might involve GPU

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#57

Post by amelius »

goodmythical wrote: post #26
amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nails and hammers are great but most of us have moved on to screws and screwdrivers. What good does it do to stick your head in the sand? CPUs are great for orchestrating work, GPUs are great for actually doing the work.

>CPUs are great for orchestrating work Right, and wouldn't it be really nice if we could check on our orchestrators to make sure their not bottlenecking ops? "How come we can fully load the GPUs?" "Idk boss, amelius said htop et al were irrelevant so we can't really investigate"

"Use gtop, a tool that shows both cpu and gpu load, and more. I am your boss, you should know this stuff, not me".

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#58

Post by internet101010 »

imrehg wrote: post #13

I've relatively recently migrated over to using btop[0], and it's the kind of modern interface, useful and informative, that I needed. As others mention it - it seems to shows the Watts used as well :) (and network, and GPU, and disks,....) [0]: https://github.com/aristocratos/btop

Long time user of btop. Only thing it is missing is a ports column next to the others. Also I think the cpu/gpu graph graph is way oversized and would like more space occupied by the open file table in general.

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#59

Post by reaperducer »

bilegeek wrote: post #51
imrehg wrote: post #13

I've relatively recently migrated over to using btop[0], and it's the kind of modern interface, useful and informative, that I needed. As others mention it - it seems to shows the Watts used as well :) (and network, and GPU, and disks,....) [0]: https://github.com/aristocratos/btop

I like btop, but there are downsides: 1.) No zram/zswap statistics. (Though htop only supports zram also.) 2.) No ZFS statistics breakdown. 3.) Doesn't support Arc GPU yet. 4.) I can't disable the disk fill bars, which makes the I/O rate graphs extremely squished unless the console window is very large.

5.) Requires an 80x24 window. Not ideal for monitoring several machines at once.

htop scales all the way down to 40x8 on my TRS-80.

Re: Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

#60

Post by JdeBP »

reaperducer wrote: post #59
bilegeek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like btop, but there are downsides: 1.) No zram/zswap statistics. (Though htop only supports zram also.) 2.) No ZFS statistics breakdown. 3.) Doesn't support Arc GPU yet. 4.) I can't disable the disk fill bars, which makes the I/O rate graphs extremely squished unless the console window is very large.

5.) Requires an 80x24 window. Not ideal for monitoring several machines at once. htop scales all the way down to 40x8 on my TRS-80.

It's bad the other way, too. btop on a 50×232 terminal over an actual 57600 BPS serial line is unusable, even in 16-colour mode. It does not have even the most basic of full-screen TUI redraw optimizations, and outputs the entire screen again and again.
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