Interpreting the top Output
Now that you have a snapshot of the system processes, let's analyze the information to understand what it tells us about the system's resource usage.
Open the top_snapshot.txt
file using the nano text editor:
nano ~/project/top_snapshot.txt
In this file, you can see the same information as displayed in the interactive top
command. Let's focus on identifying the most CPU-intensive process from the list.
Look at the process list section (below the summary area) and find the process with the highest value in the %CPU
column. This indicates the process that was consuming the most CPU at the time the snapshot was taken.
For example, if you see a line like this:
1234 labex 20 0 562340 42340 28456 S 2.0 1.0 0:30.25 firefox
This shows that process with PID 1234 (firefox) owned by user "labex" was using 2.0% of CPU and 1.0% of memory.
Take note of the following information for the process with the highest CPU usage:
- PID (Process ID)
- USER (the owner of the process)
- %CPU (CPU usage percentage)
- %MEM (Memory usage percentage)
- COMMAND (The command or program running)
To exit nano, press Ctrl+X
.
Now, create a file named top_analysis.txt
to document your findings:
echo "Most CPU-intensive process analysis" > ~/project/top_analysis.txt
Add the details of the most CPU-intensive process to the file. Replace the placeholders with the actual values you observed:
echo "PID: [Replace with PID]" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "USER: [Replace with USER]" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "CPU%: [Replace with %CPU]" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "MEM%: [Replace with %MEM]" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "COMMAND: [Replace with COMMAND]" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
For example, if process 1234 (firefox) was the most CPU-intensive, you would enter:
echo "PID: 1234" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "USER: labex" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "CPU%: 2.0" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "MEM%: 1.0" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
echo "COMMAND: firefox" >> ~/project/top_analysis.txt
Let's verify what we've written to the file:
cat ~/project/top_analysis.txt
This should display the contents of your analysis file with the details of the most CPU-intensive process.