Process Accounting With atop

Inspect resource use per process, including short-lived ones.

LinuxProcessesmonitoringperformanceLow risk

Run atop 1 5 to sample for five seconds, or atop -r logfile to replay a recorded day.

01Command

Command

$ atop 1 5

02What it does

atop records per-process, disk and network activity to a log, then lets you replay any past time window to find what caused a spike even after the process exited. That retroactive view is exactly the kind of evidence a terminal monitoring daemon provides.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

Requirementssudo apt install atop

!Warning: The collector runs as a service and writes logs; check retention settings to avoid unbounded disk use.

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

atop.1.en.html manual page (Debian bookworm)
Debian · technical · 2026-09-20
Evidence: Documents atop and its process, disk and network accounting.

Last verified: 2026-10-13 · Category: System & Settings

06Related solutions

Snapshot System Health with vmstat

Linuxvmstatmonitoringperformance

vmstat gives a compact one-line-per-interval view of CPU usage, swap activity, and I/O waits that top doesn't summarize as clearly.

Low risk ✓ 2026-09-17

Check RAM Usage with free -h

Linuxmonitoringmemoryfree

Use free -h to see used, free, and available memory plus swap in GB/MiB instead of raw kilobytes.

Low risk ✓ 2026-09-17

Watch live CPU and memory usage per process with htop

LinuxProcessessystemDiagnostics

Launch an interactive process viewer with color meters for CPU cores, memory, and swap, plus search, sort, and kill controls.

Low risk ✓ 2026-09-17