Resource Monitoring
Monitoring your server's resources is essential to understand if the system is running correctly or approaching its limits.
CPU and RAM in real time
top: basic monitor (already installed)
top
Useful keys inside top:
htop: advanced monitor (recommended)
# Installation
apt install htop # Debian/Ubuntu
dnf install htop # CentOS/AlmaLinux
# Launch
htop
htop shows graphical bars for each CPU core and RAM, and is much more readable than top.
- P: sort by CPU
- M: sort by RAM
- k: kill a process (enter the PID)
- q: exit
Current RAM usage
free -h
Example output:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.8G 1.2G 800M 45M 1.8G 2.4G
RAM: 4.0G 0B 4.0G
The available column is the one that matters: it's the RAM actually available for new processes.
Current disk usage
df -h
To see only the main partition:
df -h /
Processes consuming the most resources
Top 10 processes using the most CPU:
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -11
Top 10 processes using the most RAM:
ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -11
Real-time network traffic
# Install nethogs to see traffic by process
apt install nethogs
nethogs
# Or iftop to see traffic by connection
apt install iftop
iftop
Disk I/O statistics
# Show disk I/O in real time
iostat -x 1
# To install (if not present)
apt install sysstat
System load (load average)
uptime
Example output:
14:32:01 up 5 days, 3:21, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.08, 0.05
The three values are the load average for the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. A value equal to the number of CPU cores indicates 100% utilization. Higher values indicate that there are processes waiting.
To find out how many cores you have:
nproc
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