Practice Use drills for recall and labs for real operating judgment.

LAB-PROC-02 - Live Monitoring: top and htop

Use live process monitors to see changing CPU and memory activity without confusing a live view with a one-time snapshot.

PS Process Management

Live Monitoring: top and htop

Use live process monitors to see changing CPU and memory activity without confusing a live view with a one-time snapshot.

30 min BEGINNER LINUX Field-verified
Prerequisites
Lab LAB-PROC-01 - The Process Lifecycle
Success criteria
  • Use top to observe live process changes.
  • Explain the difference between a live monitor and a static snapshot.
Safety notes
  • If you create a practice CPU load, clean it up before leaving the lab.

Part A: The Field Guide

ps gives you a snapshot. top gives you a live view.

That difference matters because process activity changes second by second.

Useful Distinction

If you need “what is happening right now,” start with a live tool. If you need a precise one-time listing, a snapshot tool may be enough.

Part B: The Drill Deck

Terminal required: this lab is observational first.

G
Guided Step by step - type exactly this and compare the result
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Exercise G1: Open top and read the screen

  1. Run top
  2. Identify the load average area
  3. Identify the CPU summary area
  4. Identify the process list below
  5. Quit with q

Exercise G2: Reopen and watch changes

  1. Run top again
  2. Watch the list update for several seconds
  3. Notice that the most active processes can move up and down over time
  4. Quit with q

Exercise G3: Optional htop pass

If htop is installed:

  1. run htop
  2. compare how it presents CPU, memory, and process lists
  3. quit with q or F10
S
Solo Task described, hints available - figure it out
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Exercise S1: Create one safe short-lived load

In one terminal:

  1. run yes > /dev/null &
  2. note the job or PID
  3. open top
  4. find the load you just created
  5. exit top
  6. stop the yes process with kill <PID>

This is enough to prove that top reflects live changes.

Exercise S2: Explain load average carefully

Without going deep into theory, explain why a high load average means more only when you interpret it alongside the number of CPU cores and the rest of the screen.

M
Mission Real scenario - no hints, combine multiple skills
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Mission M1: Compare snapshot versus live view

Create one short practice load, then compare:

  1. what ps aux | grep yes tells you
  2. what top tells you

Explain which tool is better for a frozen moment and which tool is better for a changing workload.