atop
A full-screen ASCII performance monitor for Linux that logs system and process activity with detailed resource utilization.
What is atop?
Atop is a full-screen ASCII performance monitor for Linux that reports system and process activity in real-time and logs data for long-term analysis. It tracks CPU, memory, disk, network, and process-level metrics—including finished processes—helping administrators identify resource bottlenecks and performance issues.
Linux system administrators, DevOps engineers, and performance analysts who need detailed, persistent monitoring of system resources and processes for troubleshooting and optimization.
Atop provides comprehensive, persistent monitoring with minimal overhead, capturing all process activity (even after exit) and offering both real-time views and historical logs, making it a robust alternative to basic tools like top or htop.
Overview
System and process monitor for Linux
Use Cases
Best For
- Long-term system performance analysis and trend identification
- Troubleshooting resource bottlenecks in Linux servers
- Monitoring containerized environments and cgroup resource usage
- Analyzing network and GPU activity per process
- Generating historical system activity reports with atopsar
- Real-time monitoring with critical resource highlighting
Not Ideal For
- Teams preferring graphical user interfaces or web-based dashboards for system monitoring
- Environments requiring out-of-the-box alerting and seamless integration with modern monitoring stacks like Prometheus/Grafana
- Quick, ad-hoc monitoring sessions where lightweight tools like top or htop suffice without historical data
- Systems with strict security policies that restrict kernel module installation for optional features like netatop
Pros & Cons
Pros
Tracks all processes and threads, including finished ones, with detailed metrics on CPU, memory, disk, and network usage as highlighted in the README.
Compresses and stores raw system and process data for up to 28 days by default, enabling long-term analysis and report generation with atopsar.
Displays resource consumption per cgroup and accumulates activity per container, making it valuable for monitoring containerized environments.
Uses colors to flag overloaded system resources, helping quickly identify critical bottlenecks in real-time.
Cons
Lacks a graphical user interface, relying on text-mode displays which may not be as intuitive for users accustomed to modern GUIs.
Optional modules like netatop for network monitoring require installing kernel modules or BPF programs, which can be challenging and may not be supported on all systems.
Focuses on data collection and display without built-in alerting or seamless integration with popular monitoring stacks like Prometheus, requiring additional tools for full observability.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
spdlogFast C++ logging library.
ctopTop-like interface for container metrics
ntopWeb-based Traffic and Security Network Traffic Monitoring
htophtop is an interactive text-mode process viewer for Unix systems. It aims to be a better 'top'.
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