.TH TOP 1 .SH NAME top \- show processes sorted by CPU usage .SH SYNOPSIS .B top .SH DESCRIPTION Top displays a list of all running processes, once every update interval (currently 5 seconds). It is sorted by the CPU usage of the processes in the last interval. The first display is the CPU usage of processes since the boot time. At the top of the screen, top shows the current system load averages in the last 1-minute, 5-minute and 15-minute intervals. Then, over the last top interval it displays: the number of alive, active, and sleeping processes; memory free; and CPU usage. CPU usage is split into user, kernel, system and idle time. Kernel time is time spent by kernel tasks, that is tasks that run in kernel mode in kernel address space. System time are system user processes, such as drivers and servers. User time is all other CPU time. Then it displays all the alive processes sorted by CPU usage in the last interval, with a number of fields for every process. Currently the following fields are displayed: .PP PID The process id of the process. Some processes (so-called kernel tasks) don't have a real process id, as they are not processes that are managed by the process manager, and aren't visible to other user processes by pid. They are shown by having their process slot number in square brackets. USERNAME The username of the effective uid at which the process runs, or a number if the username could not be looked up. PRI The system scheduling priority the process is currently running as. A lower priority number gives a higher scheduling priority. The lowest is 0. The scale is internal to the kernel. NICE The base scheduling priority the process has been given at startup. 0 is normal for a regular user process; the range is -20 to 20 (PRIO_MIN and PRIO_MAX in . Most system processes are given higher base priorities. SIZE Text + data size in kilobytes. STATE RUN if the process is runnable, empty if blocking. TIME Total number of CPU time spent in the process itself. So-called system time (CPU time spent on behalf of this process by another process, generally a system process) is not seen here. CPU Percentage of time that the process was running in the last interval. COMMAND Name of the command that belongs to this process. .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR ps (1) .SH BUGS This is a from-scratch reimplementation of top for MINIX 3. Many features (such as interactive commands) are not implemented. Sorting is only done by CPU usage currently. Displayed state is only RUN or empty. .SH AUTHOR Ben Gras (beng@few.vu.nl)