Thanks. I had already looked at top's man page, but navigating it seemed tricky and buggy with vo. Either way, I'll have to keep that command you suggested in a bash script somewhere easily accessible. I know I'm swapping out information all the time, as my hard drive is working more often than not and my free memory is very low (right now it's between 16 and 17mb - yes, megabytes). On Jan 18, 2013, at 10:43 AM, Chris Blouch <cblo...@aol.com> wrote:
> 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 >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> -- >>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >>>>>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>>>>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>>>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >>>>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>>>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Have a great day, >>>>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >>>>> mehg...@gmail.com >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>>>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>>> >>> -- >>> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> >> >> >> Have a great day, >> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >> mehg...@gmail.com >> >> >> > > -- > ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > Have a great day, Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) mehg...@gmail.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
