iotop – simple top-like I/O monitor

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Jul 132009
 

    iotop does for I/O usage what top does for CPU usage. It watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel (requires 2.6.20 or later) and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes on the system. Handy for answering the question "Why is my disk churning so much?".
    Install iotop in debian

    #apt-get install iotop

    This will complete the installation.

    Using iotop

    type iotop in your terminal and you will get a regularly updated list of processes and the amount of I/O they are currently using: reads and writesin bytes per second, and percentage of time spent swapping and waiting for I/O.

    iotop

    iotop needs the CONFIG_TASK_DELAY_ACCT and CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING options enabled in the kernel; in Debian stock kernels, that’s already the case.

    Screenshot

    2005_large


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       Posted by at 12:02 am
      • Surki

        For monitoring IO usage, check nethogs and as well as speedometer

      • x33a

        use the -o switch to view only the process actually doing I/O, instead of all the processes.
        [code]iotop -o[/code]

      • Georg

        great tool to watch the Hd workload, i can recommend htop instead of old plain top

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