1IOTOP(1) General Commands Manual IOTOP(1)
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6 iotop - simple top-like I/O monitor
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9 iotop [OPTIONS]
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12 iotop watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel
13 (requires 2.6.20 or later) and displays a table of current I/O usage by
14 processes or threads on the system. At least the CONFIG_TASK_DELAY_ACCT
15 and CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING options need to be enabled in your Linux
16 kernel build configuration, these options depend on CONFIG_TASKSTATS.
17 iotop displays columns for the I/O bandwidth read and written by each
19 process/thread during the sampling period. It also displays the per‐
20 centage of time the thread/process spent while swapping in and while
21 waiting on I/O. For each process, its I/O priority (class/level) is
22 shown. In addition, the total I/O bandwidth read and written during
23 the sampling period is displayed at the top of the interface.
24 Use the left and right arrows to change the sorting, r to reverse the
26 sorting order, o to toggle the --only option, p to toggle the --pro‐
27 cesses option, a to toggle the --accumulated option, q to quit or i to
28 change the priority of a thread or a process' thread(s). Any other key
29 will force a refresh.
30
32 --version
33 Show the version number and exit
34 -h, --help
36 Show usage information and exit
37 -o, --only
39 Only show processes or threads actually doing I/O, instead of
40 showing all processes or threads. This can be dynamically tog‐
41 gled by pressing o.
42 -b, --batch
44 Turn on non-interactive mode. Useful for logging I/O usage over
45 time.
46 -n NUM, --iter=NUM
48 Set the number of iterations before quitting (never quit by
49 default). This is most useful in non-interactive mode.
50 -d SEC, --delay=SEC
52 Set the delay between iterations in seconds (1 second by
53 default). Accepts non-integer values such as 1.1 seconds.
54 -p PID, --pid=PID
56 A list of processes/threads to monitor (all by default).
57 -u USER, --user=USER
59 A list of users to monitor (all by default)
60 -P, --processes
62 Only show processes. Normally iotop shows all threads.
63 -a, --accumulated
65 Show accumulated I/O instead of bandwidth. In this mode, iotop
66 shows the amount of I/O processes have done since iotop started.
67 -k, --kilobytes
69 Use kilobytes instead of a human friendly unit. This mode is
70 useful when scripting the batch mode of iotop. Instead of choos‐
71 ing the most appropriate unit iotop will display all sizes in
72 kilobytes.
73 -t, --time
75 Add a timestamp on each line (implies --batch). Each line will
76 be prefixed by the current time.
77 -q, --quiet
79 suppress some lines of header (implies --batch). This option can
80 be specified up to three times to remove header lines.
81 -q column names are only printed on the first iteration,
82 -qq column names are never printed,
83 -qqq the I/O summary is never printed.
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86 ionice(1), top(1), vmstat(1)
87
89 iotop was written by Guillaume Chazarain.
90 This manual page was started by Paul Wise for the Debian project and is
92 placed in the public domain.
93 April 2009 IOTOP(1)