Ahh, that's right. You were more concerned with RAM than CPU. If you're
low on RAM then the system will start swapping memory onto and off of
your hard drive which can bring everything to a crawl. Anyway, I first
discovered that running top only one time seems to always give 0% for
CPU so I changed to do a couple samples. I guess the first try must be
buggy:
top -ncols 3 -l5 -n5
This now runs top 5 times and I just review the last run. Back to the
memory usage, it gets complicated because there is all this real and
virtual memory stuff, plus a single process's memory chunks could be
scattered all over so it takes top a bit of work to total things up,
sometimes making top the highest CPU user on an otherwise idle system.
Anyway, if you navigate up past the PID COMMAND %CPU row you'll come
across a line like this:
PhysMem: 776M wired, 2138M active, 616M inactive, 3531M used, 435M free.
The wired+active numbers are usually what's reported as memory in use
while the free+inactive numbers are considered available. So on my 4GB
laptop I have about 3GB used and 1GB free, which is pretty healthy. I'd
check that on yours. If you're pushing 10% free or less you're probably
swapping. So you could do something like this:
top -n5 -l3 -stats cpu,command,rsize,vsize -o rsize
This displays the top 5 processes by resident memory size. For me it was
something like this:
%CPU COMMAND RSIZE VSIZE
7.7 kernel_task 401M 5066M
0.0 mds 217M 4300M
0.0 Safari 175M 3808M
0.0 WebProcess 125M 3636M
0.0 Finder 111M 3771M
You can find out more about any terminal command, like top, by typing
'man' followed by the command. So 'man top' will give you more details
about all the parameters than you'll want to know.
CB
On 1/18/13 10:14 AM, Alex Hall wrote:
That's a useful command, thanks. I can't seem to get the top processes though,
at least not according to processor load or ram usage. The five it showed me
were using 0% CPU and I know they don't take up much ram at all...
On Jan 18, 2013, at 9:54 AM, Chris Blouch <cblo...@aol.com> wrote:
I couldn't seem to get the columns to sort either but you could always use
'top' from the terminal. Just type (or copy paste) the command like this:
top -ncols 3 -l1 -n5
ncols tells it to only give the first three columns which is the processID,
process name and %CPU. The l1 means to sample just once. You can change the
number to do it over and over if you want. The n5 means to show just the top 5
processes. If you want the top 10 just change the 5 to 10.
CB
On 1/18/13 2:58 AM, Ricardo Walker wrote:
How odd,
You would think that sorting command would work in such a table. But on my
machine too, it doesn't seem to work.
Ricardo Walker
rica...@appletothecore.info
Twitter:@apple2thecore
www.appletothecore.info
On Jan 17, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@gmail.com> wrote:
I know I have low ram, but the question stands: can you sort process lists by
CPU usage or ram? I tried the vo-shift-backslash command and was taken to the
headers list, but activating the buttons there did not seem to do anything at
all. Is there any way to do this?
On Jan 17, 2013, at 10:48 PM, candiesti...@me.com wrote:
I had a similar problem with my macbook when I installed mountain lion. I upgraded to 4
gigabytes of ram and that took care of the problem. I rarely ever get the
"busy" notice, and when I do, it lasts for a brief time and then everything
works fine.
On Jan 17, 2013, at 7:36 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Every time I start my mac (2011 Mini with 2gb ram and 10.8), it is sluggish for
at least ten to fifteen minutes. Eventually things calm down, provided I stay
within three or four apps, but for those first minutes everything is slow and
busy more often than not. Is there a way I can use Activity Monitor to see
which apps and/or processes are taking up the mac's resources, such as CPU time
or ram? Thanks.
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
mehg...@gmail.com
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Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
mehg...@gmail.com
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