Top is the application that provides information on the applications that are using the most CPU or memory. It shows the nice level of the application which really comes in handy if it is an application that you want to use but want it to have a lower priority. Beagle was one such application that I found on my machine at one time. Top is generally installed by default on most distributions.

Now in addition to Top for the operating system there is mod_top. mod_top is a module that works with the LAMP stack. mod_top monitors LAMP applications that are using PHP 4.4 and 5.x applications. The user interface is modeled after the standart Top applicaton mentioned above. mod_top can help locate application bottleneck and an applications using high memory.

mod_top is quite simple to install. Simply download and unpack the source, type make, create a symlink and add a line to your php.ini file.

The other Top application that is very useful is PowerTOP. This top is designed to help you find applications that are misbehaving when your computer should be on idle. PowerTOP combine information from various kernel and userspace sources so that you can see which applications are consuming power when they shouldn’t be.

The PowerTOP website states that PowerTOP has four basic goals:

PowerTOP has these four basic goals:

* Show how well your system is using the various hardware power-saving features
* Show you the culprit software components that are preventing optimal usage of your hardware power savings
* Help Linux developers test their application and achieve optimal behavior
* Provide you with tuning suggestions to achieve low power consumption

To build the application just type make and then run the program…

tar -zxf powertop-1.9.tar.gz
cd powertop-1.9
make
make install
powertop

There you have it! At least three versions of the Linux Top applicaton to help you monitor, troubleshoot and keep your machines running in top condition. Enjoy!

-j