Limit the output of the TOP command to a specific process name

Question

If you call the top command  you get all the running processes  But how can I limit the output only to a certain process name like  java    I ve tried this   top -l 2   grep java but in this way you get only snapshots and not a continuously updated list  And top -l 0   grep java is not really clear

User · Answer

how about top -b   grep java

User · Answer

Here s the only solution so far for MacOS   top -pid  pgrep java   awk  ORS   -pid      sed  s    6          though this will undesirably report invalid option or syntax  -pid if there are no java processes alive   EXPLANATION  The other solutions posted here use the format top -p id1 id2 id3  but MacOS  top only supports the unwieldy format top -pid id1 -pid id2 -pid id3    So firstly  we obtain the list of process ids which have process name  java    pgrep java   and we pipe this to awk which joins the results with delimitor   -pid      awk  ORS   -pid      Alas  this leaves a trailing delimitor  For example  we may so far have obtained the string  123 -pid 456 -pid 789 -pid     We then just use sed to shave off the final 6 characters of the delimitor     sed  s    6          We re ready to pass the results to top   top -pid

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Using the answer from here I was able to create a one liner  top -pid   pgrep process name   sed -e   a  -e  N  -e    ba  -e  s  n  -pid  g     This works for me on MacOS 10 12  Sierra

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get pid of process     pidof  lt process gt    tell top what process pid s  to display    top -p  lt pid1 gt   lt pid2 gt   etc   example   landis linux-e6510   gt pidof konsole 1841 1709 landis linux-e6510   gt top -p 1841 1709   Top will only display the 2  konsole  processes  This is useful on a busy server via ssh  not having to pipe thru grep

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Suppose    if we have more than 20 process running on the server with the same name     this will not help    top -p pgrep oracle   head -n 20   tr    n        sed  s         It will try to list and provide real time output of 20 process where we have good chance of missing other prcesses which consumes more resource       I am still looking for better option on this

User · Answer

just top -bn 1   grep java will do the trick for you

User · Answer

The following code updates a list of processes every 5 seconds via the watch command   watch -n 5 -t top -b -n 1 -p  pgrep java   head -20   tr    n        sed  s

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Running the below will give continuous update in console   bcsmc2rtese001      echo  SHELL    bin bash   bcsmc2rtese001      top   grep efare  or watch -d  top   grep efare  or top -p pid 27728 efare     15   0 75184 3180 1124 S  0 3  0 0 728 28 93 tclsh   27728 efare     15   0 75184 3180 1124 S  0 7  0 0 728 28 95 tclsh

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Use the watch command  watch -d  top -n1   grep mysql

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Find the pids of the processes you want to monitor and then use the -p option which allows you to provide a list of pids to the top command   Example   top -p 18884 -p 18892 -p 18919    PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  CPU  MEM   TIME CPU COMMAND 18884 user  25   0  672M  95M  9476 S     0 0  1 1   0 02   1 java 18892 user  25   0 2280M 123M 12252 S     0 0  1 5   0 05   1 java 18919 user  22   0 1492M 198M 28708 S     0 0  2 4   0 07   1 java    I believe you can also pass in a comma-separated list

User · Answer

Expanding on  dogbane s answer  you can get all the PIDs for a named process with pgrep to do the following   top -p    pgrep -d     java

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I run it  eg    top -b   egrep -w  java mysqld

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Using the approach mentioned in the answer by Rick Byers   top -p  pgrep java   paste -sd     -    but I had more than 20 processes running so following command can be helpful for someone who encounter a similar situation   top -p  pgrep java   head -n 20   paste -sd     -    pgrep gets the list of processes with given name - java in this case  head is used to get first 20 pids because top cannot handle more than 20 pids when using -p argument  Finally paste joins the list of pids with       You can control the process name you are looking for in the above command and the number of processes with that name you are interested to watch  You can ignore the head -n 20 part if the number of your processes with the given name is less than 20

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I came here looking for the answer to this on OSX  I ended up getting what I wanted with bash and awk   topfiltered          -z   1      amp  amp  return   dump   tmp top dump    rm -f   dump    while    do     clear        -s   dump      amp  amp  head -n      LINES - 1      dump      top -l 1 -o cpu -ncols      COLUMNS   8      awk -v p    pgrep -d                    BEGIN   split p  arr   for  k in arr  pids arr k   1           NR lt  12      1 in pids         gt   dump    done     I loop top in logging mode and filter it with awk  building an associative array from the output of pgrep  Awk prints the first 12 lines  where line 12 is the column headers  and then every line which has a pid that s a key in the array  The dump file is used for a more watchable loop

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I prefer the following so I can still use top interactively without having to look up the pids each time I run it   top -p  pgrep process-name   tr    n        sed  s          Of course if the processes change you ll have to re-run the command   Explanation    pgrep process-name returns a list of process ids which are separated by newlines tr    n      translates these newlines into commas  because top wants a comma-separated list of process ids sed is a stream editor  and sed  s       is used here to remove the trailing comma

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I solved my problem using       top -n1 -b   grep  proccess name     in this case   -n is used to set how many times top will what proccess and -b is used to show all pids   it s prevents errors like    top  pid limit  20  exceeded

User · Answer

A more specific case  like I actually was looking for    For Java processes you can also use jps -q whereby jps is a tool from  JAVA HOME bin and hence should be in your  PATH

[macos] Limit the output of the TOP command to a specific process name

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