How to monitor load on linux
- Top
Linux Top command is a performance monitoring program which is used frequently by many system administrators to monitor Linux performance and it is available under many Linux/Unix like operating systems. The top command used to dipslay all the running and active real-time processes in ordered list and updates it regularly. It display CPU usage, Memory usage, Swap Memory, Cache Size, Buffer Size, Process PID, User, Commands and much more. It also shows high memory and cpu utilization of a running processess. The top command is much userful for system administrator to monitor and take correct action when required.
- VmStat – Virtual Memory Statistics
Linux VmStat command used to display statistics of virtual memory, kernerl threads, disks, system processes, I/O blocks, interrupts, CPU activity and much more. By default vmstat command is not available under Linux systems you need to install a package called sysstat that includes a vmstat program. The common usage of command format is
- Lsof – List Open Files
Lsof command used in many Linux/Unix like system that is used to display list of all the open files and the processes. The open files included are disk files, network sockets, pipes, devices and processes. One of the main reason for using this command is when a disk cannot be unmounted and displays the error that files are being used or opened. With this command you can easily identify which files are in use.
- Tcpdump – Network Packet Analyzer
Tcpdump one of the most widely used command-line network packet analyzer or packets sniffer program that is used capture or filter TCP/IP packets that received or transferred on a specific interface over a network. It also provides a option to save captured packages in a file for later analysis. tcpdump is almost available in all major Linux distributions.
- Netstat – Network Statistics
Netstat is a command line tool for monitoring incoming and outgoing network packets statistics as well as interface statistics. It is very useful tool for every system administrator to monitor network performance and troubleshoot network related problems.
- Htop – Linux Process Monitoring
Htop is a much advanced interactive and real time Linux process monitoring tool. This is much similar to Linux top command but it has some rich features like user friendly interface to manage process, shortcut keys, vertical and horizontal view of the processes and much more. Htop is a third party tool and doesn’t included in Linux systems, you need to install it using YUM package manager tool.
- Iotop – Monitor Linux Disk I/O
Iotop is also much similar to top command and Htop program, but it has accounting function to monitor and display real time Disk I/O and processes. This tool is much useful for finding the exact process and high used disk read/writes of the processes.
- Iostat – Input/Output Statistics
IoStat is simple tool that will collect and show system input and output storage device statistics. This tool is often used to trace storage device performance issues including devices, local disks, remote disks such as NFS.
