top - Windows command-line utility to display information about
processes
SYNOPSIS
top [-d delay] [-q] [-s]
DESCRIPTION
The top(1w) Windows utility displays the system activity
and information of the most CPU-intensive processes on the system
in real time. It provides various interactive commands for
manipulating processes, and it sorts the processes by CPU usage and
memory usage.
The top utility supports the following options:
-d
Specifies the delay time between screen updates, in seconds. It
can be changed by using the s interactive command.
-q
This causes top to refresh without any delay. If a user
having administrative permissions invokes top, it runs with
the highest possible priority.
-s
This option disables the interactive commands k
(kill), r (renice), and s
(update). This is used to run top in secure
mode.
FIELD DESCRIPTION
The top utility displays two types of information. One is
specific to the CPU and memory information of the system (top
portion), and the other is process-specific information. They are
updated every 5 seconds by default. This delay time can be changed
with the d command-line option or the s interactive
command.
The system-specific information has the following fields:
Uptime
Displays the current time and the uptime information. The
uptime display can be toggled by the interactive l
(lowercase L) command.
Processes and CPU states
Displays the total number of processes running at the time of
the last update. This also displays the percentage of CPU time used
in kernel, user, and idle mode. This information can be toggled by
the interactive t command.
Mem
Displays the statistics of various memory usages. This gives
information about the total available memory, free memory, used
memory, total available swap space, free swap space, and used swap
space. It also displays the amount of cache memory used. This
information can be toggled by the interactive m
command.
The process-specific information has the following fields:
COMMAND
Command name of the process
PID
Process ID of the process
USER
User name of the process
TIME
Total CPU time the process has used since it started
%KER
Percentage of the CPU time of the process running in privilege
mode
%USE
Percentage of the CPU time of the process running in user
mode
PRI
Priority of the process
RSS
Total amount of physical memory used by the process, in
kilobytes
SWAP
Size of the swapped-out part of the process
%MEM
Process's share of the physical memory
THD
Number of threads in the process
%CPU
Process's share of the CPU time, expressed as the percentage of
total CPU time
INTERACTIVE COMMANDS
The following single-key commands are recognized while
top is running. Some of these commands are disabled if the
s option (run top in secure mode) is given as a
command-line option.
SPACE
Immediately updates the display.
h or ?
Displays the Help screen, giving a brief summary of
commands.
k
Kills a process. The user is prompted for the PID of the
process to be killed. When the PID is given, the process of the
specified PID is killed if the user has the appropriate permission.
This is not available in secure mode.
n or #
Changes the number of processes to show. The user is prompted
for the number of processes. This overrides automatic determination
of the number of processes to show, which is based on window size
measurement.
q
Exits the top utility.
r
Renices the process. This option prompts the user with the PID
of the process and the nice value. If the PID and nice value
specified are valid, the specified process is reniced subject to
the user having appropriate permissions. This command is not
available in secure mode.
s
Changes the delay between updates. The user is prompted to
enter the delay time, in seconds. Fractional values are recognized
down to microseconds. Entering 0 (zero) causes continuous updates.
The default value is 5 seconds. Note that low delay time can
greatly raise the CPU load, which is not advisable. This is not
available in secure mode.
l
(Lowercase L) Toggles display for uptime information.
m
Toggles display for memory information.
t
Toggles display for processes and CPU state information.
c
Displays full path of the command name of the process. This
option prompts the user with the PID of the process. Specifying the
PID displays the path of the corresponding process.