mrrio / vtop

Wow such top. So stats. More better than regular top.

vtop

A graphical activity monitor for the command line.

How to install

If you haven't already got Node.js, then go get it.

npm install -g vtop

If you're on macOS, or get an error about file permissions, you may need to do sudo npm install -g vtop. Don't do this if you're using nvm.

Running

This is pretty simple too.

vtop

If you really like vtop, but your finger muscle memory means you keep typing 'top' then why not add an alias to ~/.bashrc.

alias top="vtop"
alias oldtop="/usr/bin/top"

Keyboard shortcuts

• Press 'u' to update to the latest version of vtop.
• Arrow up or k to move up the process list.
• Arrow down or j to move down.
• Arrow left or h to zoom the graphs in.
• Arrow right or l to zoom the graphs out.
• g to go to the top of the process list.
• G to move to the end of the list.
• dd to kill all the processes in that group

Mouse control

If your terminal supports mouse events (like iTerm) then you can click on the items in the process list. As well as use the scroll wheel. You can disable mouse control with the vtop --no-mouse option.

FAQs

How does it work?

It uses drawille to draw CPU and Memory charts with Unicode braille characters, helping you visualize spikes. We also group processes with the same name together.

I think the CPU % is coming out wrong.

We calculate the CPU percentage as a total of your overall system power. 100% is all cores and HyperThreads maxed out. This is different to how Apple Activity monitor works.

Can I change the color scheme?

Sure, just do:

vtop --theme wizard

This loads the theme file in themes/ with the same name. Make your own and send me a Pull Request :)

You could add this to your aliases if you'd like to use it always.

alias vtop="vtop --theme brew"

What about measuring server req/s, log entries, etc etc?

Yeah that's on the list :) Feel free to send a pull request though. Check out the sensors/ folder.

What license is this under?

MIT – do what you like with it :)

Contributing

Get stuck in – click the fork button, then clone to your local machine. Use the GitHub Desktop client if you don't know Git. Tinker with the code then run this from the command line:

./bin/vtop.js

When you push it'll run the Standard JS checker http://standardjs.com/. If you run 'npm test' in your own terminal too, this runs in Travis, your PR will fail the test if this command fails.

vtop's Issues

Mouse LXTerminal

I'm using LXTerminal from LXQt to ssh into my box and run vtop.

The moment I move my mouse over the running vtop session (which otherwise works perfectly) it seems random keyboard presses are sent through somehow ... Suddenly and very quickly. The whole thing eventually crashes when I suppose pressing "u" is somehow simulated ...

Any ideas ?

updating/theme issue?

how do i check which version I'm on? i pressed u to update, and the update seems to work, but it doesn't have the monokai theme, which leads me to believe it's an old version.

Theme list in '--help' should be automatically generated

https://github.com/MrRio/vtop/blob/master/app.js#L27

Update package: glob version

[email protected] includes [email protected] and thus includes a DoS vulnerability.
See stuff like: firebase/superstatic#215

Request: sort by CPU usage and process name

Sorting should be throttled

Holding down 'c' causes node to sort the list too quickly which eats up CPU

Resizing window bug

Steps to reproduce:

Resize the window horizontally from big to small quickly.

Show pid on process list?

Thinking it would be nice if the pid was displayed next to the name of the process. I'm not what method is being used to generate the list, but @MrRio if that's something you're not opposed to I can send in a PR. Thoughts?

Process list does not show up on SmartOS

Awesome project! Mainly because there is no top on SmartOS, just prstat! Unfortunately the generic process numbers don't render:

vtop consumes processor's time

hi
first, I want to think you for the project, I find it cool :)
But I have a little problem, I don't if you too have the same problem, vtop uses processor more than htop, as you can see on the picture, 51% vs 3%

"Not a terminal" on Windows with MinTTY

On Windows, while using the MinTTY executable packaged with MSYS2, vtop crashes saying "Not a terminal".
I'm unable to use the default Windows commandline, as it doesn't support the unicode characters needed for graph display.
Here's the full stack info if needed:

C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\node_modules\blessed\lib\program.js:241
    throw new Error('Not a terminal.');
    ^

Error: Not a terminal.
    at Program.listen (C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\node_modules\blessed\lib\program.js:241:11)
    at new Program (C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\node_modules\blessed\lib\program.js:89:8)
    at Function.Program (C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\node_modules\blessed\lib\program.js:28:12)
    at C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\app.js:18:21
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\matin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vtop\app.js:646:2)
    at Module._compile (module.js:413:34)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:422:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
    at Module.require (module.js:367:17)

Color and Character Problems Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Debian Distro

This is pretty minor and certainly an edge case, but for fun I have loaded up a Raspberry Pi as a Node.js box. And, of course, I have to have the best 'top' around on it so I installed vtop. However, the colors are all wrong and the border characters are incorrect. Could you point me to where I could tweak these configurations and maybe get it corrected?

Weird CPU chart

My CPU chart looks shredded (there are wholes in some vertical lines but not always on the same horizontal line) compared to .

Is it normal ?

I am using Kubuntu 14.04.3 LTS and launched vtop in Konsole.

Use library current-processes to generate the list of processes

https://www.npmjs.org/package/current-processes

If there's anything you need help with, let me know.

Return to default size bug

Steps to reproduce:

In Terminal, hit 'Window > Return to Default size' a couple of times

Process List doesn't work correctly

Everytime process list shows this and nothing changes.

OS X 10.9.3
node v0.10.28

vtop doesnt play nice with tmux via ssh

vtop seems to be over estimating the size of the tmux pane causing it to cut into other panes please see attached screenshot

It seems like it is happening out of tmux as well

Crash on OS X 10.11

Hi.

I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or what. But it appears that vtop is crashing when I move my cursor insiden the Terminal window.
I have uploaded a video on YouTube showing the problem.

This is on OS X 10.11.3

Processes listed with over 100% memory usage

Notice php5-fpm is listed as 142% memory usage here:

However, this is incorrect as there is no swap in use, and the server is only using 725 MB out of 1024 MB total.

It may be counting shared memory weirdly.

Debian Linux 64-bit.

vtop not in path

I try running vtop after installing it, but I get the 'command not found' error

Think about a web frontend?

Add log file monitoring plugin – say for Apache req/s

Npm installs older version

Fixed bugs like showing the correct free memory on linux do not appear to be fixed in the version installed from npm.

Ability to set update interval?

I know vtop's aim is to be a steroidal version of (h)top, but it might be nice to be able to set the interval as you can with those (or -d / --delay as they both call it). In (h)top the delay is more so you can absorb the current snapshot of info but in vtop it has the advantage of letting you control what period of time your histogram represents (based on your interval and terminal width).

Being totally greedy, it'd be great if the metrics for the interval were still aggregated every X msec (from a quick scan it looks like 100ms?), so if I set my update interval to be 5 seconds, vtop would still read 50 samples and then just render the average values for that 5 second period.

uid must be an unsigned int (installing , osx 10.11.1 , iterm)

when trying to install vtop on osx with this command sudo npm install -g vtop getting multiple error thats shown below !

npm ERR! uid must be an unsigned int
npm ERR!
npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this error at:
npm ERR!     <https://github.com/npm/npm/issues>
npm ERR! Darwin 15.0.0
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "vtop"
npm ERR! node v4.5.0
npm ERR! npm  v3.10.8

Hyper rendering is...off

It's slowly pushing the borders over. I assume it'd eventually cover up other sub-screens.

Vtop gets crazy as soon as I move the mouse

As soon as I start moving my mouse, vtop quits (probably crashes) and I start to see what looks like the mouse coordinates in ASCII in the terminal input. It sometimes comes back to normal after a few moments, others I have to run reset. This happens on both terminator and xfce4-terminal. I haven't tried anything else.

filter by process

It will be nice to filter by process either in the UI or like vtop --pid $PID

Don't use `sudo`

Instead of telling people to use sudo under "How to install", we should rather tell them to fix their npm permissions instead.

Globally installing npm packages using sudo is not considered a good practise. 😊

weird characters on ubuntu 15.10 64-bit

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2k96err9wzns0sl/Screenshot%202015-12-31%2001.55.45.png?dl=0

Memory percentage reported as NaN

One of my programs consumes a massive amount of memory. For some reason, this gets reported as "NaN". Furthermore, the leading process character get chopped off of the process name.

Option to disable automatic updates

Great work with vtop, I’ve used it on loads of machines in a variety of places.

I’m currently trying to use it on a server’s mission-control style dashboard, however I’m having difficulty running it longterm because autoupdate keeps dropping to a sudo password prompt.

For now I’ve commented out part of the source to disable automatic updating, but it would be great if there was a flag to do this without me hacking around. Maybe vtop --no-update or something?

Wrong width Braille characters cause other text to be pushed off-screen

I'm on a Chromebook using Secure Shell (hterm), and my vtop looks like this:

Not sure if the Braille is to narrow or my ASCII characters are too wide, but as the screen fills up it eventually pushes the entire "memory" column off the screen. Resizing the text does not fix it.
By default TERM=xterm but setting it to xterm-256color makes no difference.

Split memory into used / buffered / cached / free

A thoroughly good suggestion from @makeusabrew that needs implementing.

Firefox reported as simply "fox"

vtop reports firefox as simply "fox":

htop reports it as /usr/ib/firefox/firefox.

List of themes only works if vtop is called from vtop project directory

Steps to reproduce:

rio ~/Projects/vtop (master)
$ vtop --help

  Usage: vtop [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help              output usage information
    -t, --theme  [name]     set the vtop theme [becca|brew|dark|monokai|parallax|wizard]
    --quit-after [seconds]  Quits vtop after interval
    -V, --version           output the version number

rio ~/Projects/vtop (master)
$ cd ..
rio ~/Projects 
$ vtop --help

  Usage: vtop [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help              output usage information
    -t, --theme  [name]     set the vtop theme []
    --quit-after [seconds]  Quits vtop after interval
    -V, --version           output the version number

rio ~/Projects 

if using nvm don't use sudo

I tried to install using sudo but I'm switching node versions with nvm. So if you are running nvm don't use sudo and it will install.

Updates do not display properly with terminal set to linux

OSX 10.9.3
iTerm2 1.0.0.20140518
UTF-8
Terminal set to: linux
Works fine under xterm, let me know if you need any more info! Other than that app looks cool good work!

http://i.imgur.com/a4H6GtM.jpg

Separator characters look off

Not sure if this is because the font you're using is missing on my machine, but the dividers look different?

Theme needs to persist across auto-update

Add flexible layouts

layout.json:
Something like:

[ ['cpu', 'memory'], ['process'] ] # Two rows, cpu and memory at the top, process list at the bottom

Then ability to pass in layout

vtop --layout "['cpu']" # Just a big CPU chart

Multi monitor issue

Hello,

I've got a multi monitor setup in which one monitor is smaller than the other.

If vtop is opened in the bigger one and the mouse cursor goes off the smaller monitor bounds, vtop quits.

Cheers

Should memory only display the used memory?

The memory graph displays the total memory - used memory plus cached and buffered memory. I think the graph should display only the used memory or two/three graphs for the buffered memory aswell.

Due to the use of os-utils, we need to go down one level of abstraction and modify the code used by os-utils..

exports.freeCommand = function(callback){

    // Only Linux
    require('child_process').exec('free -m', function(error, stdout, stderr) {

       var lines = stdout.split("\n");


       var str_mem_info = lines[1].replace( /[\s\n\r]+/g,' ');

       var mem_info = str_mem_info.split(' ')

       total_mem    = parseFloat(mem_info[1])
       free_mem     = parseFloat(mem_info[3])
       buffers_mem  = parseFloat(mem_info[5])
       cached_mem   = parseFloat(mem_info[6])

       used_mem = total_mem - (free_mem + buffers_mem + cached_mem)

       callback(used_mem -2);
    });
}

Keyboard shortcuts for sorting by mem/cpu

Great suggestion from @remy

Table widget

Hi there,

Is it possible to create a table widget for blessed from table the top process list ?

chjj/blessed#53

I could use it with https://github.com/bulkan/pggy

vtop dies a silent death

This pertains to vtop not launching and instead returning to shell without a peep.

Thank you very much for helping out. I'm more a n00b than I would like to be so I appreciate the patience.

$nodejs -v
v0.10.25

$lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributer ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

Per your request, 'export' output below:

ptdecker@ptdecker-Satellite-L55-A:~$ export
declare -x CLUTTER_IM_MODULE="xim"
declare -x COLORTERM="gnome-terminal"
declare -x COMPIZ_BIN_PATH="/usr/bin/"
declare -x COMPIZ_CONFIG_PROFILE="ubuntu"
declare -x COMP_WORDBREAKS="
"'><;|&(:"
declare -x DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-JexEHW5ZRs"
declare -x DEFAULTS_PATH="/usr/share/gconf/ubuntu.default.path"
declare -x DESKTOP_SESSION="ubuntu"
declare -x DISPLAY=":0"
declare -x GDMSESSION="ubuntu"
declare -x GDM_LANG="en_US"
declare -x GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID="this-is-deprecated"
declare -x GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL="/run/user/1000/keyring-Y34XBy"
declare -x GNOME_KEYRING_PID="1779"
declare -x GPG_AGENT_INFO="/run/user/1000/keyring-Y34XBy/gpg:0:1"
declare -x GTK_IM_MODULE="ibus"
declare -x GTK_MODULES="overlay-scrollbar:unity-gtk-module"
declare -x HOME="/home/ptdecker"
declare -x IM_CONFIG_PHASE="1"
declare -x INSTANCE=""
declare -x JOB="dbus"
declare -x LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
declare -x LANGUAGE="en_US"
declare -x LESSCLOSE="/usr/bin/lesspipe %s %s"
declare -x LESSOPEN="| /usr/bin/lesspipe %s"
declare -x LOGNAME="ptdecker"
declare -x LS_COLORS="rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42:ow=34;42:st=37;44:ex=01;32:.tar=01;31:.tgz=01;31:.arj=01;31:.taz=01;31:.lzh=01;31:.lzma=01;31:.tlz=01;31:.txz=01;31:.zip=01;31:.z=01;31:.Z=01;31:.dz=01;31:.gz=01;31:.lz=01;31:.xz=01;31:.bz2=01;31:.bz=01;31:.tbz=01;31:.tbz2=01;31:.tz=01;31:.deb=01;31:.rpm=01;31:.jar=01;31:.war=01;31:.ear=01;31:.sar=01;31:.rar=01;31:.ace=01;31:.zoo=01;31:.cpio=01;31:.7z=01;31:.rz=01;31:.jpg=01;35:.jpeg=01;35:.gif=01;35:.bmp=01;35:.pbm=01;35:.pgm=01;35:.ppm=01;35:.tga=01;35:.xbm=01;35:.xpm=01;35:.tif=01;35:.tiff=01;35:.png=01;35:.svg=01;35:.svgz=01;35:.mng=01;35:.pcx=01;35:.mov=01;35:.mpg=01;35:.mpeg=01;35:.m2v=01;35:.mkv=01;35:.webm=01;35:.ogm=01;35:.mp4=01;35:.m4v=01;35:.mp4v=01;35:.vob=01;35:.qt=01;35:.nuv=01;35:.wmv=01;35:.asf=01;35:.rm=01;35:.rmvb=01;35:.flc=01;35:.avi=01;35:.fli=01;35:.flv=01;35:.gl=01;35:.dl=01;35:.xcf=01;35:.xwd=01;35:.yuv=01;35:.cgm=01;35:.emf=01;35:.axv=01;35:.anx=01;35:.ogv=01;35:.ogx=01;35:.aac=00;36:.au=00;36:.flac=00;36:.mid=00;36:.midi=00;36:.mka=00;36:.mp3=00;36:.mpc=00;36:.ogg=00;36:.ra=00;36:.wav=00;36:.axa=00;36:.oga=00;36:.spx=00;36:.xspf=00;36:"
declare -x MANDATORY_PATH="/usr/share/gconf/ubuntu.mandatory.path"
declare -x OLDPWD
declare -x PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"
declare -x PWD="/home/ptdecker"
declare -x QT4_IM_MODULE="xim"
declare -x QT_IM_MODULE="ibus"
declare -x QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="appmenu-qt5"
declare -x SELINUX_INIT="YES"
declare -x SESSION="ubuntu"
declare -x SESSIONTYPE="gnome-session"
declare -x SESSION_MANAGER="local/ptdecker-Satellite-L55-A:@/tmp/.ICE-unix/1925,unix/ptdecker-Satellite-L55-A:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1925"
declare -x SHELL="/bin/bash"
declare -x SHLVL="1"
declare -x SSH_AGENT_LAUNCHER="upstart"
declare -x SSH_AGENT_PID="1860"
declare -x SSH_AUTH_SOCK="/run/user/1000/keyring-Y34XBy/ssh"
declare -x TERM="xterm"
declare -x TEXTDOMAIN="im-config"
declare -x TEXTDOMAINDIR="/usr/share/locale/"
declare -x UBUNTU_MENUPROXY="1"
declare -x UPSTART_SESSION="unix:abstract=/com/ubuntu/upstart-session/1000/1781"
declare -x USER="ptdecker"
declare -x VTE_VERSION="3409"
declare -x WINDOWID="27262987"
declare -x XAUTHORITY="/home/ptdecker/.Xauthority"
declare -x XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/usr/share/upstart/xdg:/etc/xdg"
declare -x XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="Unity"
declare -x XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/share/ubuntu:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/"
declare -x XDG_GREETER_DATA_DIR="/var/lib/lightdm-data/ptdecker"
declare -x XDG_MENU_PREFIX="gnome-"
declare -x XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/1000"
declare -x XDG_SEAT="seat0"
declare -x XDG_SEAT_PATH="/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0"
declare -x XDG_SESSION_ID="c2"
declare -x XDG_SESSION_PATH="/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0"
declare -x XDG_VTNR="7"
declare -x XMODIFIERS="@im=ibus"

Memory appears to be almost always at 100% (OS X 10.9)

At least under OS X 10.9.3, memory seems to be constantly at around 98–100%.

This is probably due to how Mavericks works with RAM, although I could be wrong.

License

"MIT- do what you like with it :)"

If the purpose of this is that you can "do what you like with it :)", wouldn't it be better to use a more permissive license, like CC0?

dont update with sudo

most installs will install globally just fine without it

here's what just happened to me:

1. npm update -g
2. explodes due to vtop being owned by root (previous update)
3. npm command is now broken
4. all global modules broken

had to reinstall node and npm and wipe out /usr/local/lib/node_modules to fix this

Missing process list and other oddities in Windows

This is what it looks like in Windows 7.

• braille characters are drawn with an offset
• process list is empty
• other info doesn't line up