I'm looking to improve my skills in managing and monitoring system resources directly from the command line. Could you share your favorite commands, tools, or scripts for tracking CPU usage, memory, disk activity, and network performance in a Unix/Linux environment? I'm particularly interested in real-time monitoring and troubleshooting tips that can be executed with minimal overhead on the system.
Thanks in advance!
Lastly, nmon is an all-in-one tool that helps monitor system performance across various resources like CPU, disk, memory, and network. It's interactive and allows you to switch between different resources on the fly. Very handy for detailed analysis.
One of my go-to commands is top. It provides a dynamic, real-time view of a running system, showing system summary information and a list of tasks currently being managed by the kernel. It's excellent for quick checks on which processes are consuming the most resources.
I highly recommend htop for a more user-friendly alternative to top. It provides a colorful, graphical view of your CPU, memory, and swap usage. You can easily sort processes, kill them, and manage priorities without needing to enter their PID.
For disk usage analysis, iotop is a must. It displays a table of current I/O usage by processes or threads on the system, similar to top. This is very useful for spotting processes causing disk thrashing.
I just remembered vmstat is another valuable tool, offering information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and CPU activity. It's particularly useful for getting a snapshot of the system's health and identifying bottlenecks.
When it comes to monitoring network traffic, iftop does for network usage what top does for CPU usage. It shows a real-time list of network connections and their bandwidth usage, making it easier to identify what's consuming your bandwidth.
Thanks for all the recommendations! I'm leaning towards nmon because it offers a comprehensive and user-friendly way to monitor various system resources in real-time. Its ability to provide detailed insights and output data for analysis seems especially useful for both quick checks and in-depth performance tracking. It looks like a great tool for users at any level of expertise.