Dstat, NetHogs, and nload

Charly's Column – Traffic Monitors

Article from Issue 233/2020
Author(s):

Every sys admin has a few favorite tools that they always carry with them, if only because they do not want to be without these often overlooked treasures. The gems dangling from Charly's key ring include Dstat, NetHogs, and nload.

On my laptop there is a list of topics I want to write about in the near or distant future. There are tools, tricks, and hacks that I often and gladly use, but which I cannot convert into enough text for a whole column. This explains why three small utilities share this column today.

Dstat

Let's start with Dstat [1]. Last issue, I described how to get details about the installed hardware (especially RAM) from Linux. I was promptly asked how to detect "hogs" as quickly and easily as possible – processes that grab resources (such as CPU, RAM, etc.) without so much as a by your leave. I will keep this short, because I have already written about this topic [2]. My secret weapon looks like this:

# dstat -cdn -D sda -N enp2s0 -C total --top-cpu --top-io --top-mem -f 5

[...]

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