It is hard to monitor CPU usage and memory usage using Command-line tools like “top”. That’s why we introduce you vtop. It is a free and open-source, manageable yet powerful and extendable terminal activity monitoring tool written in Node.js.
It is designed to make it easy for users to observe CPU usage across multi-process applications (those that have a master process and child processes, for example, NGINX, Apache, Chrome, etc.). vtop also makes it easy to see spikes over time as well as memory usage.
vtop uses Unicode braille characters to draw and present CPU and Memory usage charts, supporting you visualize spikes. Additionally, it group processes with the same name (master and all child processes) together.
This article will help you to learn "how to install vtop monitoring tool in Linux".
Requirements:
As a prerequisite, your system must have Node.js and NPM installed.
Installing vtop in Linux Systems
Once your system has Node.js and NPM installed, run the following command to install vtop. Use the sudo command if required to gain root privileges for package installation.
# sudo npm install -g vtop
After installing vtop, please run the following command to launch it.
# vtop
The following are vtop keyboard shortcuts, pressing:
- u updates to the latest version of vtop.
- k or arrow up moves up the process list.
- j or arrow down moves down the process list.
- g takes you to the top of the process list.
- G takes you to the end of the list.
- dd kill all the processes in that group (you have to select the process name first).
To adjust the color scheme, use the --theme switch. You can take any of the available themes (acid, becca, brew, certs, dark, gooey, gruvbox, monokai, nord, parallax, seti, and wizard), for example:
# vtop --theme wizard
To fix the interval between updates (in milliseconds), practice the --update-interval. In this example, 20 milliseconds is equivalent to 0.02 seconds:
# vtop --update-interval 20
You can also set vtop to eliminate after some seconds, using the --quit-after option as shown
# vtop --quit-after 5
To get vtop help, run the following command.
# vtop -h
vtop has many features in the pipeline, including measuring server requests, log entries, etc.