Viewing Running Processes on your Dedicated Server

In this tutorial we show you how to view current running process on your Dedicated server. This is done using command line interface over SSH. We will show you two commands, as well as example results.

View Running Processes using the “top” command

1. Log into your Dedicated server via SSH. Keep in mind you will see the results based on your user, so if you want to see all processes login as the “root” user.
2. Run the following command (highlighted in red) in your shell instance:
   

   [email protected] [~]# top -icd1

   
   

   You will then see a list of how long the server has be up (in days), how many users are currently connected, and the load average (from 1, 5, and 15 minutes ago). Listed will also be information regarding running Tasks, Cpu(s), Mem(ory), and Swap (Hard Disk). It will look similar to this, but keep in mind it will depend on your specific sites, and scripts:

   
   

   top – 06:56:05 up 151 days, 20:42, 2 users, load average: 0.17, 0.23, 0.24
   Tasks: 47 total, 1 running, 45 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
   Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
   Mem: 1572864k total, 1512676k used, 60188k free, 0k buffers
   Swap: 2621440k total, 291720k used, 2329720k free, 1145668k cached

   
   

       PID   USER       PR   NI     VIRT     RES     SHR       S   %CPU   %MEM     TIME+     COMMAND
   23607   user5       20     0   13004   1196       944       R         0.0             0.1     0:01.37     top -icd1

   
   

View Running Processes using the “ps” command

1. Log into your Dedicated Server via SSH. Using the following command should allow you to see all processes, including those being run by the “root” user.
2. Run the following command (highlighted in red) in your shell instance:
   

   [email protected] [~]# ps aux

   
   

   You will then see a list of running processes similar to the results below:

   
   

   USER           PID   %CPU   %MEM         VSZ       RSS           TTY             STAT   START     TIME   COMMAND
   root                   1         0.0             0.0     19236         516           ?                 Ss         2015           0:18     init
   root                   2         0.0             0.0             0             0             ?                 S           2015           0:00   [kthreadd/9198]root                   3         0.0             0.0             0             0             ?                 S           2015           0:00   [khelper/9198]dbus             774         0.0             0.0     21436         72             ?                 Ss         2015           0:00   dbus-daemon –system
   root             1013         0.0             0.2   100892     4388           ?                 Ss       06:40           0:00   sshd:   user5   [priv]
   

Congratulations, now you know how to view current running process on your Dedicated server!