the fields in TOP command

[prasadb]

hello admins,
i just wonder to know the meaning of the fields that appear after the TOP command..
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS..

well, CPU LOAD adn USER is understandable..i dont about the rest..

kindly throw some light on this..

thanks in advance..

[Aashique]

Hi,

CPU = Processor number on which the process is
executing (only on multi-processor
systems).

TTY = Terminal interface used by the process.

PID = Process ID number.

PSET = ID of the processor set to which the
processor belongs.This is shown only when -P option is used.

PRI = Current priority of the process

NI = Nice value ranging from -20 to +20

SIZE = Total size of the process in kilobytes.This includes text, data, and stack.

RES = Resident size of the process in kilobytes.The resident size information is, at best,an approximate value.

STATE = Current state of the process. The various states are sleep, wait, run, idl, zomb, orstop.

%WCPU = Weighted CPU (central processing unit) percentage.

%CPU = Raw CPU percentage. This field is used to sort the top processes.


Thanks & Regards

Aashique

[Ramesh S]

Hi

I would suggest you to go thru man pages. That is the best practice.

Best Regards
Ramesh

[Jeeshan]

Hi

The first four states in the list below are found on most every Unix system. Other state names may appear on different platforms, and some of these are also listed below.

Idle = Nothing to do
User = Running a user's process
INTERRUPT = Kernel Handling a kernel call, fault, or interrupt
Nice = Running a user's niced process
Wait = Waiting on some form of i/o
iowait = Waiting on user i/o
Swap (SSYS) = Waiting on swapping or paging i/o

[Sajjad Sahir · Accepted solution]

Dear Prasad
Top is the most widely tool for system performance monitoring and it is available on all most all unix o/s.
The output of top command is mainly divided in to thee major catagories.
1.cpu
2.memory
3.process

1.cpu part:load averages-this information is very useful to check any abrupt change in u system load
2.number of process currently active on the system and other state also like zombie etc..
3.percentage of cpu time used in ecah cpu state. if u have multiple cpu one line for every cpu will be present here.

2>Memory area
total pshysical memory
active physical memory
virtual memory
free vitual memory
total free memory



3.Process
The process data constist of a numer of columns.The process that is utilizing the is the most at the top(thats why we are calling the name top command)

see output of top
Load averages: 0.01, 0.00, 0.00
166 processes: 138 sleeping, 27 running, 1 zombie
Cpu states:
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0 0.00 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1 0.00 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
2 0.01 0.0% 0.0% 1.4% 98.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
3 0.00 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
--- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
avg 0.01 0.0% 0.0% 0.2% 99.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 345664K (202576K) real, 434264K (249424K) virtual, 3921768K free Page#
1/17

CPU TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
1 ? 50 root 152 20 3552K 3552K run 71:39 0.59 0.59 vxfsd
0 ? 1444 root 152 20 44204K 12392K run 61:35 0.40 0.40 cimserver
3 ? 3934 root -27 20 39224K 34816K run 35:30 0.26 0.26 cmcld
1 ? 1437 root 152 20 16496K 9740K run 0:17 0.18 0.18 rpcd
0 ? 1447 root 152 20 78052K 26412K run 2:23 0.16 0.16 cimprovagt
2 ? 1760 root 152 20 99736K 32412K run 1:45 0.14 0.14 vxsvc
1 ? 36 root 152 20 192K 192K run 8:14 0.12 0.12 schedcpu
3 ? 1630 root 152 20 16304K 9496K run 0:38 0.12 0.12 swagentd
0 ? 1908 root 168 20 4844K 808K sleep 13:02 0.11 0.11 utild


cpu-This represents a cpu number on which the process is being executed.
TTY- terminal used by a process if a process is starting at boot time u can see here ?
PID -means process id
user name of the owner of the process
eg:from my output
3 ? 50 root 152 20 3552K 3552K run 71:39 0.73 0.73 vxfsd
ruunign on third cpu owner of the process is root and process is vxfd and process id is 50 total size of the process in memorry
3552K
state: and status of the process is running
TIME : cpu consumed time for this one is around 71.39
%WCPU :weifhted cpu percentage cpu utilization by the process
see .60 here
ok
the last one is %cpu raw cpu percentage ustilization by the process
comm name of the command that started the process
in my output
vxfsd is the staterd the process
I think now u got it

[YAQUB_1]

Hi Prasad,

Can U check also below link:-
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/top.1.html

I think so U can find out entire "top" related issue.....

Thanks--Yaqub
I am a Customer Advocate!!!

[Greg Melnik]

Unfortunately man pages do not give definition of %CPU nor explain how it was weighted for %WCPU. So far I can not find answer anywhere.

The seems to become even worse because numbers for the LOAD part do not correspond with %CPU or %WCPU for the process. You can see from example above and I have similar data that average IDLE load is 99.8, while, if you add %CPU, the result is 1.96% or 0.49% as an average between 4 CPUs.

Does anybody have a good idea?

Thanks, Greg