In this example, you can see large files are sorted by size in the /tmp/size file.
Monitoring System Performance
If your Linux system is a multiuser computer, sharing the processing power of that computer can
be a major issue. Likewise, any time you can stop a runaway process or reduce the overhead of an
unnecessary program running, your Linux server can do a better job serving files, Web pages, or
e-mail to the people who rely on it.
Some distributions of Linux include graphical utilities to simplify administration, such as System
Monitor in Ubuntu (shown in Figure 4-5).
All Linux distributions include utilities that can help you monitor the performance of your Linux
system. The kinds of features you want to monitor in Linux include CPU usage, memory usage
(RAM and swap space), and overall load on the system. A popular tool for monitoring that information
in Linux is the top command.
To start the top utility in a Terminal window, type top. The top command determines the largest
CPU-consuming processes on your computer, displays them in descending order on your screen,
and updates the list every five seconds.
By adding the -S option to top, the display shows you the cumulative CPU time for each process,
as well as any child processes that may already have exited.
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