Tutorial

How To Use Top, Netstat, Du, & Other Tools to Monitor Server Resources

How To Use Top, Netstat, Du, & Other Tools to Monitor Server Resources

Introduction

Every computer system benefits from proper administration and monitoring. Keeping an eye on how your system is running will help you discover issues and resolve them quickly.

There are plenty of command line utilities created for this purpose. This guide will introduce you to some of the most helpful applications to have in your toolbox.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this guide, you will need access to a computer running a Linux-based operating system. This can either be a virtual private server which you’ve connected to with SSH or your local machine. Note that this tutorial was validated using a Linux server running Ubuntu 20.04, but the examples given should work on a computer running any version of any Linux distribution.

If you plan to use a remote server to follow this guide, we encourage you to first complete our Initial Server Setup guide. Doing so will set you up with a secure server environment — including a non-root user with sudo privileges and a firewall configured with UFW — which you can use to build your Linux skills.

Step 1 – How To View Running Processes in Linux

You can see all of the processes running on your server by using the top command:

  1. top
Output
top - 15:14:40 up 46 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05 Tasks: 56 total, 1 running, 55 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1019600k total, 316576k used, 703024k free, 7652k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 258976k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1 root 20 0 24188 2120 1300 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.56 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.07 ksoftirqd/0 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 watchdog/0 8 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset 9 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper 10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs

The first several lines of output provide system statistics, such as CPU/memory load and the total number of running tasks.

You can see that there is 1 running process, and 55 processes that are considered to be sleeping because they are not actively using CPU cycles.

The remainder of the displayed output shows the running processes and their usage statistics. By default, top automatically sorts these by CPU usage, so you can see the busiest processes first. top will continue running in your shell until you stop it using the standard key combination of Ctrl+C to exit a running process. This sends a kill signal, instructing the process to stop gracefully if it is able to.

An improved version of top, called htop, is available in most package repositories. On Ubuntu 20.04, you can install it with apt:

  1. sudo apt install htop

After that, the htop command will be available:

  1. htop
Output
Mem[||||||||||| 49/995MB] Load average: 0.00 0.03 0.05 CPU[ 0.0%] Tasks: 21, 3 thr; 1 running Swp[ 0/0MB] Uptime: 00:58:11 PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command 1259 root 20 0 25660 1880 1368 R 0.0 0.2 0:00.06 htop 1 root 20 0 24188 2120 1300 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.56 /sbin/init 311 root 20 0 17224 636 440 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.07 upstart-udev-brid 314 root 20 0 21592 1280 760 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.06 /sbin/udevd --dae 389 messagebu 20 0 23808 688 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 dbus-daemon --sys 407 syslog 20 0 243M 1404 1080 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 rsyslogd -c5 408 syslog 20 0 243M 1404 1080 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 rsyslogd -c5 409 syslog 20 0 243M 1404 1080 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 rsyslogd -c5 406 syslog 20 0 243M 1404 1080 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.04 rsyslogd -c5 553 root 20 0 15180 400 204 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 upstart-socket-br

htop provides better visualization of multiple CPU threads, better awareness of color support in modern terminals, and more sorting options, among other features. Unlike top, It is not always installed by default, but can be considered a drop-in-replacement. You can exit htop by pressing Ctrl+C as with top.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts that will help you use htop more effectively:

  • M: Sort processes by memory usage
  • P: Sort processes by processor usage
  • ?: Access help
  • k: Kill current/tagged process
  • F2: Configure htop. You can choose display options here.
  • /:: Search processes

There are many other options that you can access through help or setup. These should be your first stops in exploring htop’s functionality. In the next step, you’ll learn how to monitor your network bandwidth.

Step 2 – How To Monitor Your Network Bandwidth

If your network connection seems overutilized and you are unsure which application is the culprit, a program called nethogs is a good choice for finding out.

On Ubuntu, you can install nethogs with the following command:

  1. sudo apt install nethogs

After that, the nethogs command will be available:

  1. nethogs
Output
NetHogs version 0.8.0 PID USER PROGRAM DEV SENT RECEIVED 3379 root /usr/sbin/sshd eth0 0.485 0.182 KB/sec 820 root sshd: root@pts/0 eth0 0.427 0.052 KB/sec ? root unknown TCP 0.000 0.000 KB/sec TOTAL 0.912 0.233 KB/sec

nethogs associates each application with its network traffic.

There are only a few commands that you can use to control nethogs:

  • M: Change displays between “kb/s”, “kb”, “b”, and “mb”.
  • R: Sort by traffic received.
  • S: Sort by traffic sent.
  • Q: quit

iptraf-ng is another way to monitor network traffic. It provides a number of different interactive monitoring interfaces.

Note: IPTraf requires a screen size of at least 80 columns by 24 lines.

On Ubuntu, you can install iptraf-ng with the following command:

  1. sudo apt install iptraf-ng

iptraf-ng needs to be run with root privileges, so you should precede it with sudo:

  1. sudo iptraf-ng

You’ll be presented with a menu that uses a popular command line interface framework called ncurses.

iptraf-ng main interface

With this menu, you can select which interface you would like to access.

For example, to get an overview of all network traffic, you can select the first menu and then “All interfaces”. It will give you a screen that looks like this:

iptraf-ng Traffic View

Here, you can see what IP addresses you are communicating on all of your network interfaces.

If you would like to have those IP addresses resolved into domains, you can enable reverse DNS lookup by exiting the traffic screen, selecting Configure and then toggling on Reverse DNS lookups.

You can also enable TCP/UDP service names to see the names of the services being run instead of the port numbers.

With both of these options enabled, the display may look like this:

iptraf-ng Named Traffic View

The netstat command is another versatile tool for gathering network information.

netstat is installed by default on most modern systems, but you can install it yourself by downloading it from your server’s default package repositories. On most Linux systems, including Ubuntu, the package containing netstat is net-tools:

  1. sudo apt install net-tools

By default, the netstat command on its own prints a list of open sockets:

  1. netstat
Output
Active Internet connections (w/o servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 192.241.187.204:ssh ip223.hichina.com:50324 ESTABLISHED tcp 0 0 192.241.187.204:ssh rrcs-72-43-115-18:50615 ESTABLISHED Active UNIX domain sockets (w/o servers) Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path unix 5 [ ] DGRAM 6559 /dev/log unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 9386 unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 9385 . . .

If you add an -a option, it will list all ports, listening and non-listening:

  1. netstat -a
Output
Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 192.241.187.204:ssh rrcs-72-43-115-18:50615 ESTABLISHED tcp6 0 0 [::]:ssh [::]:* LISTEN Active UNIX domain sockets (servers and established) Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6195 @/com/ubuntu/upstart unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 7762 /var/run/acpid.socket unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6503 /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket . . .

If you’d like to filter to see only TCP or UDP connections, use the -t or -u flags respectively:

  1. netstat -at
Output
Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 192.241.187.204:ssh rrcs-72-43-115-18:50615 ESTABLISHED tcp6 0 0 [::]:ssh [::]:* LISTEN

See statistics by passing the “-s” flag:

  1. netstat -s
Output
Ip: 13500 total packets received 0 forwarded 0 incoming packets discarded 13500 incoming packets delivered 3078 requests sent out 16 dropped because of missing route Icmp: 41 ICMP messages received 0 input ICMP message failed. ICMP input histogram: echo requests: 1 echo replies: 40 . . .

If you would like to continuously update the output, you can use the -c flag. There are many other options available to netstat which you learn by reviewing its manual page.

In the next step, you’ll learn some useful ways of monitoring your disk usage.

Step 3 – How To Monitor Your Disk Usage

For a quick overview of how much disk space is left on your attached drives, you can use the df program.

Without any options, its output looks like this:

  1. df
Output
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/vda 31383196 1228936 28581396 5% / udev 505152 4 505148 1% /dev tmpfs 203920 204 203716 1% /run none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock none 509800 0 509800 0% /run/shm

This outputs disk usage in bytes, which may be a bit hard to read.

To fix this problem, you can specify output in a human-readable format:

  1. df -h
Output
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vda 30G 1.2G 28G 5% / udev 494M 4.0K 494M 1% /dev tmpfs 200M 204K 199M 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 498M 0 498M 0% /run/shm

If you want to see the total disk space available on all filesystems, you can pass the --total option. This will add a row at the bottom with summary information:

  1. df -h --total
Output
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vda 30G 1.2G 28G 5% / udev 494M 4.0K 494M 1% /dev tmpfs 200M 204K 199M 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 498M 0 498M 0% /run/shm total 32G 1.2G 29G 4%

df can provide a useful overview. Another command, du gives a breakdown by directory.

du will analyze usage for the current directory and any subdirectories. The default output of du running in a nearly-empty home directory looks like this:

  1. du
Output
4 ./.cache 8 ./.ssh 28 .

Once again, you can specify human-readable output by passing it -h:

  1. du -h
Output
4.0K ./.cache 8.0K ./.ssh 28K .

To see file sizes as well as directories, type the following:

  1. du -a
Output
0 ./.cache/motd.legal-displayed 4 ./.cache 4 ./.ssh/authorized_keys 8 ./.ssh 4 ./.profile 4 ./.bashrc 4 ./.bash_history 28 .

For a total at the bottom, you can add the -c option:

  1. du -c
Output
4 ./.cache 8 ./.ssh 28 . 28 total

If you are only interested in the total and not the specifics, you can issue:

  1. du -s
Output
28 .

There is also an ncurses interface for du, appropriately called ncdu, that you can install:

  1. sudo apt install ncdu

This will graphically represent your disk usage:

  1. ncdu
Output
--- /root ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.0KiB [##########] /.ssh 4.0KiB [##### ] /.cache 4.0KiB [##### ] .bashrc 4.0KiB [##### ] .profile 4.0KiB [##### ] .bash_history

You can step through the filesystem by using the up and down arrows and pressing Enter on any directory entry.

In the last section, you’ll learn how to monitor your memory usage.

Step 4 – How To Monitor Your Memory Usage

You can check the current memory usage on your system by using the free command.

When used without options, the output looks like this:

  1. free
Output
total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 1004896 390988 123484 3124 490424 313744 Swap: 0 0 0

To display in a more readable format, you can pass the -m option to display the output in megabytes:

  1. free -m
Output
total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 981 382 120 3 478 306 Swap: 0 0 0

The Mem line includes the memory used for buffering and caching, which is freed up as soon as needed for other purposes. Swap is memory that has been written to a swapfile on disk in order to conserve active memory.

Finally, the vmstat command can output various information about your system, including memory, swap, disk io, and cpu information.

You can use the command to get another view into memory usage:

  1. vmstat
Output
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 1 0 0 99340 123712 248296 0 0 0 1 9 3 0 0 100 0

You can see this in megabytes by specifying units with the -S flag:

  1. vmstat -S M
Output
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 1 0 0 96 120 242 0 0 0 1 9 3 0 0 100 0

To get some general statistics about memory usage, type:

  1. vmstat -s -S M
Output
495 M total memory 398 M used memory 252 M active memory 119 M inactive memory 96 M free memory 120 M buffer memory 242 M swap cache 0 M total swap 0 M used swap 0 M free swap . . .

To get information about individual system processes’ cache usage, type:

  1. vmstat -m -S M
Output
Cache Num Total Size Pages ext4_groupinfo_4k 195 195 104 39 UDPLITEv6 0 0 768 10 UDPv6 10 10 768 10 tw_sock_TCPv6 0 0 256 16 TCPv6 11 11 1408 11 kcopyd_job 0 0 2344 13 dm_uevent 0 0 2464 13 bsg_cmd 0 0 288 14 . . .

This will give you details about what kind of information is stored in the cache.

Conclusion

Using these tools, you should begin to be able to monitor your server from the command line. There are many other monitoring utilities that are used for different purposes, but these are a good starting point.

Next, you may want to learn about Linux process management using ps, kill, and nice.

Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.

Learn more about us


About the authors

Default avatar

Senior DevOps Technical Writer


Still looking for an answer?

Ask a questionSearch for more help

Was this helpful?
 
5 Comments


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Hi

  • How can I delete the data or the websites that I visited from the DigitalOcean server and stop saving my information or buffering or history?

And i see internet speed is very slow since to two days, does the data that saved automatically in my server cause?

Note: I don’t use it to download information as cloud or game, just to change my position and hide my real information. Thank you.

Hello

I have been using a unified monitoring tool to monitor my company’s internal network and servers. It is called Pandora FMS. Perhaps you’d like to take a look at it: http://pandorafms.com/

Regards Ramon Pulido

@us

Do you know how to get vnstat so it displays like the demo?

http://humdi.net/vnstat/cgidemo/

vnstat is quite a nice traffic monitor + all you have to do is

sudo apt-get install vnstat

and then run “vnstat” on the command line. When there’s enough data the output looks like this:

                          rx      /      tx      /     total    /   estimated

eth0: Jan '14 1.85 GiB / 21.59 GiB / 23.44 GiB / 70.29 GiB yesterday 1.06 GiB / 13.49 GiB / 14.55 GiB today 805.39 MiB / 8.11 GiB / 8.89 GiB / 26.34 GiB

and it causes almost no system load due to just using /proc to ask the kernel about network transmission data. It’s a real nice addition to the bare bandwidth graph in Digital Ocean’s control panel - as you can see it shows actual traffic in gigabytes per month and per day.

If you want DU in a bit user friendly format, you can install NCDU ( http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu/scr ). On Ubuntu its available straight from apt-get.

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

Sign up

Join the Tech Talk
Success! Thank you! Please check your email for further details.

Please complete your information!

Get our biweekly newsletter

Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

Hollie's Hub for Good

Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.

Become a contributor

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

Welcome to the developer cloud

DigitalOcean makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Learn more
DigitalOcean Cloud Control Panel