How to install gtop (System Monitoring Dashboard) on Linux

Introduction

gtop is a tool which reads information about processes and the state of the system in dynamic mode. As its name, we can think that it is a graphic top command. It contains some views to monitor your cpu, memory, swap, disk and network usage with a percentage and graphical representation. It also shows you the path of the commands in progress.

Gtop is one of the nifty tool that is capable to display system processes dynamically in graphic mode on your Linux terminal.

As the name implies, Gtop stands for graphic top command which reads system process, memory, CPU, network and disk usage information and populate the results in graphic mode with a percentage.

Install prerequisites

Make sure your system have Node.js, in order to install Gtop. If not, follow the below steps to install it. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine which.

For CentOS8/RHEL8 systems, use dnf command to install Nodejs and npm.

# dnf module list nodejs
# dnf module enable nodejs:14
# dnf install nodejs

[root@unixcop ~]# dnf module list nodejs
Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:03:46 ago on Wed Jul 28 06:21:12 2021.
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream
Name                       Stream                       Profiles                                                 Summary                              
nodejs                     10 [d][x]                    common [d], development, minimal, s2i                    Javascript runtime                   
nodejs                     12 [x]                       common [d], development, minimal, s2i                    Javascript runtime                   
nodejs                     14 [x]                       common [d], development, minimal, s2i                    Javascript runtime                   

Hint: [d]efault, [e]nabled, [x]disabled, [i]nstalled
[root@unixcop ~]# dnf module enable nodejs:14
Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:03:57 ago on Wed Jul 28 06:21:12 2021.
Dependencies resolved.
======================================================================================================================================================
 Package                             Architecture                       Version                             Repository                           Size
======================================================================================================================================================
Enabling module streams:
 nodejs                                                                 14                                                                           

Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================================================================

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Complete!
[root@unixcop ~]# 

[root@unixcop ~]# dnf install nodejs

And For Fedora systems, use dnf command to install Nodejs and npm.

$ curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash -
$ sudo dnf -y install nodejs

For Ubuntu/LinuxMint systems, use apt-get command or apt command to install Nodejs and npm.

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

And For Debian system, use apt command or apt-get command to install Nodejs and npm.

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | bash -
$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

For Arch Linux based systems, use pacman command to install Nodejs and npm.

$ sudo pacman -S nodejs npm

For openSUSE system, use zypper command to install Nodejs and npm.

$ sudo zypper install nodejs4

Install Gtop

Simply run the following command to install Gtop on Linux.

root@unixcop ~]# sudo npm install gtop -g
/usr/local/bin/gtop -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/gtop/bin/gtop
+ [email protected]
added 62 packages from 83 contributors in 18.163s
[root@unixcop ~]# 
 install gtop -g

Use Gtop

Just fire gtop command on terminal to bring the awesome graphical system monitoring dashboard on terminal. By default it load process based on CPU utilization.

# gtop

You can see that it shows you processes with the graph on your terminal. You can use your keyboard to scroll the different processes listed there.

Also gtop offers the advantage to sort the process

Gtop allows user to sort the process table by pressing below keywords.

• p : Process Id

• c : CPU usage

• m : Memory usage

• UP/DOWN Arrow Keys : Use UP/DOWN arrow keys to navigate top to bottom of running process

Note : When you see question marks or other different characters, try to run it with these environment variables.

$ LANG=en_US.utf8 TERM=xterm-256color gtop

To exit gtop, you can use q or echap command. You can see a percentage and graphical representation of the utilization in progress.

Conclusion

gtop offers the possibility to see all the processes currently in progress execution. It acts like top command but it offers a graphic mode which is more interesting. During my tests, I was not able to act on the processes listed as kill a process or use other commands than those shown earlier.