Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands using top from sorted by
Terminal - Commands using top - 16 results
top -bn2|awk -F, '/Cpu/{if (NR>4){print 100-gensub(/.([^ ]+).*/,"\\1","g",$4)}}'
2014-04-18 17:48:05
User: ichbins
Functions: awk top
Tags: top cpu cpuinfo
1
Up
Down
Shows cpu load in percent

This version is precise and requires one second to collect statistics. Check sample output for a more generic version and also a remote computer invocation variant. It doesn't work with the busybox version of the 'top' command but can be adjusted

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -n2 -d 0.5 | grep ^Cpu | sed 's/[[:alpha:]%]*//g' | awk 'NR == 2 {printf("%.2f\n",100-$5)}'
2012-09-06 12:56:26
User: wizzra
Functions: awk grep sed top
0
Up
Down
Get Current CPU Usage

Get the current cpu % usage on your system.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -p $(pgrep -d , foo)
2012-06-27 20:59:09
User: michelsberg
Functions: top
Tags: top watch process ps monitor
15
Up
Down
Use top to monitor only all processes with the same name fragment 'foo'

top accecpts a comma separated list of PIDs.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top '-p' $(pgrep -d ' -p ' foo)
2012-06-27 18:32:03
User: __
Functions: top
Tags: top watch process ps monitor
3
Up
Down
Use top to monitor only all processes with the same name fragment 'foo'

Like command 10870, but no need for sed

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top $(pgrep foo | sed 's|^|-p |g')
2012-06-14 15:13:00
User: michelsberg
Functions: sed top
Tags: top watch process ps monitor
5
Up
Down
Use top to monitor only all processes with the same name fragment 'foo'
pgrep foo

may return several pids for process foobar footy01 etc. like this:

11427

12576

12577

sed puts "-p " in front and we pass a list to top:

top -p 11427 -p 12576 -p 12577
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -b -n 1 | sed 1,6d
2012-03-01 13:27:55
User: mlsmaycon
Functions: sed top
3
Up
Down
Processes by CPU usage
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -p `pgrep pidgin`
2011-11-23 20:35:53
User: cesarbustios
Functions: top
Tags: top monitoring
0
Up
Down
Monitor especific process with top

You can also use different process using comma: top -p `pgrep pidgin`, `pgrep python` but you have to make sure the process exists or you'll get an error

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -p `pidof apache2 | awk '{gsub(/[ ]/,",");print}'`
2011-07-28 20:13:36
User: hbalagtas
Functions: awk top
Tags: top processes top apache
0
Up
Down
Monitor specific process (ie apache) using Top

Show only specific process id's using Top

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f -name '*.php' | xargs cat | sed -re ':top /\/\*.*\*\// { s/\/\*.*\*\///g ; t top }; /\/\*/ { N ; b top }' | awk '$0 !~ /^[\t[:space:]]*($|(\/\/)|(#))/' | wc -l
2011-05-05 06:12:34
User: andrehgw
Functions: awk cat find sed top wc xargs
0
Up
Down
How many lines in your PHP project without comments

An advanced possibility to count the lines of code like in #8394

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top
2011-04-14 06:59:06
User: atgf0127
Functions: top
-2
Up
Down
top

usage: top -hv | -bcisSHM -d delay -n iterations [-u user | -U user] -p pid [,pid ...]

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -b -n 1 |grep httpd|wc -l
2010-07-25 08:40:03
User: dotanmazor
Functions: grep top wc
-4
Up
Down
Show the number of current httpd processes

Of course, the httpd can be replaced with any other process name

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -bn 1 | awk '{if($1 ~ /^[0-9]+$/ && $9 > 97) {print $1;exit}}'|xargs kill
2010-06-02 13:51:40
User: chx
Functions: awk top xargs
-1
Up
Down
Kill processes hogging up CPU (Flash after resume)

I found Flash eating one of my CPUs after resume, the command above will help with that. For optional kicks you can put it into a script in /etc/pm/sleep.d/ (aspect in #swhack wrote this for me)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -b -n 1
2010-01-24 16:17:30
User: r00t4u
Functions: top
2
Up
Down
Top Command in batch mode

running top command in batch mode. it is usefull if you want to redirect the output in a file.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
tmpfile=$(mktemp) && echo -e 'startup_message off\nscreen -t top htop\nsplit\nfocus\nscreen -t nethogs nethogs wlan0\nsplit\nfocus\nscreen -t iotop iotop' > $tmpfile && sudo screen -c $tmpfile
2009-08-03 10:14:02
User: Patola
Functions: echo screen sudo top
18
Up
Down
Triple monitoring in screen

This command starts screen with 'htop', 'nethogs' and 'iotop' in split-screen. You have to have these three commands (of course) and specify the interface for nethogs - mine is wlan0, I could have acquired the interface from the default route extending the command but this way is simpler.

htop is a wonderful top replacement with many interactive commands and configuration options. nethogs is a program which tells which processes are using the most bandwidth. iotop tells which processes are using the most I/O.

The command creates a temporary "screenrc" file which it uses for doing the triple-monitoring. You can see several examples of screenrc files here: http://www.softpanorama.org/Utilities/Screen/screenrc_examples.shtml

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top
2009-03-18 00:03:42
User: Zenexer
Functions: top
Tags: Process Management
-5
Up
Down
View process statistics in realtime

A simple but effective replacement for ps aux. I used to waste my time running ps over and over; top is the way to go. It also allows complex sorting options. Press q to exit "nicely" (Ctrl + C is always an option, of course). Note that the list updates each second, resorting in the process; if you're trying to grab a specific PID, you might be better off with ps.

htop

Alternatively, htop is available, though it may not come pre-installed. htop is slightly more interactive than top and includes color coding, visuals, and a nice interface for selecting and then killing processes. (Thanks to bwoodacre for this great tool.)

Show sample output | Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
top -b -n 1 | awk '{if (NR <=7) print; else if ($8 == "D") {print; count++} } END {print "Total status D: "count}'
2009-02-19 21:14:46
User: jcgam69
Functions: awk top
4
Up
Down
count processes with status "D" uninterruptible sleep
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate