iotop – I/O Monitor

iotop is a top-like utility for monitoring I/O usage. It shows processes or threads currently causing disk I/O, displaying read and write bandwidth for each process.

Key Features

• Real-Time: Live I/O monitoring
• Per-Process: Track individual process I/O
• Accumulated: Show total I/O since start
• Sorting: Sort by read or write speed
• Batch Mode: Output for scripts

Installation

Install iotop on Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install iotop

Usage Examples

Common iotop commands:

# Basic usage (requires root)
sudo iotop

# Show only active processes
sudo iotop -o

# Accumulated I/O
sudo iotop -a

# Batch mode for scripts
sudo iotop -b -n 5 > io_report.txt

# Show specific process
sudo iotop -p 1234

Benefits

iotop identifies disk I/O bottlenecks quickly. When systems are slow due to disk activity, iotop reveals which processes are responsible.

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