top -c command in linux to filter processes listed based on processname

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12075591

Question 

top -c

Top lists all the processes, there are good options to filter the processes by username by using the option -u but I am wondering if there is any easy way to filter the processes based on processname listed under COMMAND column of the top output.

For Example I would want like top -some option -substring of processname and top displays pids only having this substring in its command name

Was it helpful?

Solution

Using pgrep to get pid's of matching command lines:

top -c -p $(pgrep -d',' -f string_to_match_in_cmd_line)

top -p expects a comma separated list of pids so we use -d',' in pgrep. The -f flag in pgrep makes it match the command line instead of program name.

OTHER TIPS

It can be done interactively

After running top -c , hit o and write a filter on a column, e.g. to show rows where COMMAND column contains the string foo, write COMMAND=foo

If you just want some basic output this might be enough:

top -bc |grep name_of_process

You can add filters to top while it is running. Just press the o key and then type in a filter expression.

For example, to monitor all processes containing the string "java", use the filter expression COMMAND=java.

You can add multiple filters by pressing o again.

You can filter by user with u. Clear all filters with =.

@perreal's command works great! If you forget, try in two steps...

example: filter top to display only application called yakuake:

$ pgrep yakuake
1755

$ top -p 1755

useful top interactive commands 'c' : toggle full path vs. command name 'k' : kill by PID 'F' : filter by... select with arrows... then press 's' to set the sort

the answer below is good too... I was looking for that today but couldn't find it. Thanks

After looking for so many answers on StackOverflow, I haven't seen an answer to fit my needs.

That is, to make top command to keep refreshing with given keyword, and we don't have to CTRL+C / top again and again when new processes spawn.

Thus I make a new one...

Here goes the no-restart-needed version.

__keyword=name_of_process; (while :; do __arg=$(pgrep -d',' -f $__keyword); if [ -z "$__arg" ]; then top -u 65536 -n 1; else top -c -n 1 -p $__arg; fi; sleep 1; done;)

Modify the __keyword and it should works. (Ubuntu 2.6.38 tested)

2.14.2015 added: The system workload part is missing with the code above. For people who cares about the "load average" part:

__keyword=name_of_process; (while :; do __arg=$(pgrep -d',' -f $__keyword); if [ -z "$__arg" ]; then top -u 65536 -n 1; else top -c -n 1 -p $__arg; fi; uptime; sleep 1; done;)

In htop, you can simply search with 

/process-name

I ended up using a shell script with the following code:

#!/bin/bash

while [ 1 == 1 ]
do
    clear
    ps auxf |grep -ve "grep" |grep -E "MSG[^\ ]*" --color=auto
    sleep 5
done

Most of the answers fail here, when process list exceeds 20 processes. That is top -p option limit. For those with older top that does not support filtering with o options, here is a scriptable example to get full screen/console outuput (summary information is missing from this output).

__keyword="YOUR_FILTER" ; ( FILL=""; for i in  $( seq 1 $(stty size|cut -f1 -d" ")); do FILL=$'\n'$FILL; done ;  while :; do HSIZE=$(( $(stty size|cut -f1 -d" ")  - 1 ));  (top -bcn1 | grep "$__keyword"; echo "$FILL" )|head -n$HSIZE; sleep 1;done )

Some explanations

__keyword = your grep filter keyword
HSIZE=console height
FILL=new lines to fill the screen if list is shorter than console height
top -bcn1 = batch, full commandline, repeat once

what about this?

top -c -p <PID>

This expect script will filter processes by name and show newly created ones. It is basically automate the user interaction with top by sending 'o' and 'COMMMAND=my_program' for you. similar to @nos Answer.

file: topname.exp

#!/usr/bin/expect -- 

if {[llength $argv] < 1 } {
  send_user "Usage: topname process_name top_cmd_args \n"
  exit 1
}
set keyword [lindex $argv 0]

spawn top {*}[lrange $argv 1 end]


expect {

    -re .
     {
        send "o\r"
        expect "*add filter*"
        send "COMMAND=${keyword}\r"
        interact
    }
    
}

So you would use it like:

./topname.exp my_program

./topname.exp java # this filters java processes

Also it passed other flags that top accepts like -u e.g.

./topname.exp java -u root # this filters java processes by root user

./topname.exp java -u root -d 1 # this filters java processes by root user and delay top update by 1 second

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