System monitor in console mode

Question

Is there a way to start system monitor app, from the console ?? I am not talking about terminal. I am talking about Ctrl + Alt + F1 mode

Plenty of command line options in System Monitoring Tools For Ubuntu — muru, Oct 31 '17 at 05:36

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 22 '12 at 15:17

17

you can use htop also and its more featured than top .

if you want to test it , then you have install it with

sudo apt-get install htop

after that type htop .

answered Sep 22 '12 at 15:17

Raja G

Depending on what your interested in, you might also want a specilized monitoring tool like iptraf, to monitor network traffic (very useful on a router) – alci Sep 22 '12 at 15:23
For a lot more detail about htop you can look at this answer: https://askubuntu.com/questions/787642/system-monitor-doesnt-accurately-show-memory-usage/971157#971157 – SDsolar Oct 31 '17 at 05:42

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

2

You can try the top command to have a system monitor in console. It will display the CPU usage for the processes running in your machine.

Another alternative is conky-cli. You can install it with the command

sudo apt-get install conky-cli

or using the link conky-cli

After installation, start it with conky command.

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

Community

answered Sep 22 '12 at 15:13

Anwar

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 31 '17 at 05:50

2

One option is to use dstat

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dstat

then run it by simply entering

dstat

to get this default output which updates every second and provides column headers with every screenful:

The advantage dstat has over htop is the same that System-Monitor has, namely that it shows trends.

dstat is very versatile. Here is an article that explains the command line switches and shows some of the advanced options:

answered Oct 31 '17 at 05:50

SDsolar

After writing this post I discovered that it works well to use Xming with PuTTY to get an X11 terminal over ssh - not on point of the question, but useful info even though the character terminal is much, much faster: https://askubuntu.com/questions/971171/how-to-use-putty-to-get-x11-connections-over-ssh-from-windows-to-ubuntu/971172#971172 – SDsolar Oct 31 '17 at 18:39
Thanks for the suggestion. I like how dstat has few dependencies, shows trends, and combines all CPUs. I only wish the CPU history were graphical instead of numerical – Andrew Dec 11 '19 at 21:13

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 17 '18 at 20:41

1

nmon from the eponymous package.

edited Jan 17 '18 at 20:41

David Foerster

answered Jan 17 '18 at 20:17

Kozm

nmon is great! It shows historical trends for CPU usage, combines all CPUs into one chart, works on the console, and has light package dependencies. – Andrew Dec 11 '19 at 21:16

4 Answers4