Htop (Unix)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

htop is an interactive
system monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Monitoring can tra ...
process viewer and process manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program
top Top most commonly refers to: * Top, a basic term of orientation, distinguished from bottom, front, back, and sides * Spinning top, a ubiquitous traditional toy * Top (clothing), clothing designed to be worn over the torso * Mountain top, a moun ...
. It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
status. htop can also display the processes as a tree. Users often deploy htop in cases where Unix top does not provide enough information about the system's processes. htop is also popularly used interactively as a
system monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Monitoring can tra ...
. Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending
signals A signal is both the process and the result of Signal transmission, transmission of data over some transmission media, media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processin ...
to processes. htop is written in the
C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...
using the ncurses library. Its name is derived from the original author's first name, as a nod to pinfo, an
info Info is shorthand for "information Information is an Abstraction, abstract concept that refers to something which has the power Communication, to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the Interpretation (philosophy), interpr ...
-replacement program that does the same. Because system monitoring interfaces are not standardized among
Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...
operating systems, much of htop's code must be rewritten for each operating system. Cross-platform, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and OS X (now macOS) support was added in htop 2.0. Solaris/Illumos/OpenIndiana support was added in 2.2.0. htop was forked by several developers as htop-dev, and with support from the original author, the homepage was later redirected to a new domain.


See also

*
top (software) top is a task manager or system monitor program, found in many Unix-like operating systems, that displays information about CPU and memory utilization. Overview The program produces an ordered list of running processes selected by user-specif ...
*
bmon bmon is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source monitoring and debugging tool to monitor Bandwidth (computing), bandwidth and capture and display Computer network, networking-related statistics. It features various output methods i ...
, bandwidth monitoring


References


External links

{{Commons category, Htop, lcfirst=yes
htop Homepage
Free software programmed in C Free software that uses ncurses System monitors Unix process- and task-management-related software