Open a new Terminal Window if not already in command line.
Type in the ‘top’ command.
Now a list of processes will appear as below.
top - 09:38:39 up 1:09, 2 users, load average: 0.43, 0.29, 0.29 Tasks: 165 total, 2 running, 163 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 4.5%us, 3.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1974152k total, 1622216k used, 351936k free, 68908k buffers Swap: 2493588k total, 0k used, 2493588k free, 1040980k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3652 root 20 0 412m 96m 51m S 9 5.0 9:05.48 Xorg
There are a number of interactive controls with can be used together with the ‘top’ command, including Killing processes and changing the priorities of processes.
- For example killing processes use the K key and then type in the process idwhich you wish to kill.
Type in the following command to find out more about the top command: man top