In the next article we are going to take a look at Bashtop. This is a utility with which we can monitor the team's resources from the terminal of Gnu / Linux. It is a tool for the command line that will show us statistics for the CPU, memory, running processes or bandwidth, to name a few. Bashtop can be installed on Gnu / Linux, macOS, and even FreeBSD.
This tool reaches users with a responsive terminal interface with a customizable menu. Monitoring various system metrics is made easy by the neat arrangement of the various display sections. With Bashtop, we will also be able to order the processes, as well as easily switch between the different sorting options. What's more, can send SIGKILL, SIGTERM and SIGINT to processes that interests us.
General characteristics of Bashtop
- It's a program simple to use.
- It has a fast and responsive user interface with process selection using the UP / DOWN keys.
- The program has a function to display detailed statistics of the selected process.
- We will have available the ability to filter processes.
- We will have an easy switch available between the sorting options.
- We can send signals SIGTERM, SIGKILL, SIGINT to the selected process.
- The program has a user interface menu from which we can change all the options of the configuration file.
- Graphic of autoscale for network usage.
- Our will show a message in the menu if there is a new version available.
- It will also show us the current disk read and write speeds.
- It has multiple data collection methods.
These are some of the features of this program. They can all be consulted from the project GitHub page.
Installing Bashtop on Ubuntu
To successfully install Bashtop, we will need to make sure we have the following dependencies ready on our system:
- Bash 4.4 or later versions.
- git.
- GNU Coreutils.
- GNU sed, awk, and grep command line tools.
- Sensors Lm. This is optional, and is used to collect CPU temperature statistics.
All the requirements can be consulted in detail from the project Github page.
Manual installation
Once all the prerequisites are met, we are going to start with the manual installation of Bashtop. This should work on all distributions.
To install Bashtop manually, let's start by cloning the git repository with the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):
git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bashtop.git
Now we can compile from source using the following commands in the same terminal:
cd bashtop sudo make install
uninstall
To uninstall Bashtop, from the Bashtop folder, we will only have to execute the command:
sudo make uninstall
Then we will have to delete the folder from where we executed the previous command.
Install via snap or PPA
Here we will be able to choose 2 ways to install Bashtop in Ubuntu. The first will be using snap or we can also use the APT package manager.
For install this tool by package snap, we will have to execute in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the command:
sudo snap install bashtop
If you prefer to use the APT package manager, you will first have to add the Bashtop PPA executing in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bashtop-monitor/bashtop
After updating the package list, we can now install Bashtop with the command shown below:
sudo apt install bashtop
uninstall
If you have used the snap package for the installation, you can remove it from your system by typing in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the command:
sudo snap remove bashtop
If you chose to use the repository for installation, it can be removed from the system by typing in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:bashtop-monitor/bashtop
In this case, we can now proceed to uninstall Bashtop typing in the same terminal:
sudo apt remove bashtop; sudo apt autoremove
Use Bashtop
After installation, when we want to start this tool, we will simply have to run the following command in terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):
bashtop
Configuration
The Bashtop configuration file can be found at ~ / .config / bashtop / bashtop.cfg. In this file we will be able to change the parameters as we consider appropriate, to customize the appearance and the metric output.
To take a look at the commands and keyboard shortcuts, we can start the tool and press the key ESC. Then you will have to select the option 'SUPPORT'using the down arrow.
This tool provides users with a great way to keep an eye on our system resources. Nevertheless, in addition to consuming more resources, it is also slower than top and htop. For more information about Bashtop, users can consult the project GitHub page.