I want to know which process writes/reads the most from disk over time, I mean that I will start the monitoring process than after X time I will be able to see what was the process that used the disk the most. is there any thing like that? I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 i want it to run at the background
1 Answer
iotop - simple top-like I/O monitor
iotop watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel (requires 2.6.20 or later) and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes or threads on the system. At least the CONFIG_TASK_DELAY_ACCT and CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING options need to be enabled in your Linux kernel build configuration, these options depend on CONFIG_TASKSTATS.
iotop displays columns for the I/O bandwidth read and written by each process/thread during the sampling period. It also displays the percentage of time the thread/process spent while swapping in and while waiting on I/O. For each process, its I/O priority (class/level) is shown. In addition, the total I/O bandwidth read and written during the sampling period is displayed at the top of the interface.
Use the left and right arrows to change the sorting, r to reverse the sorting order, o to toggle the --only option, p to toggle the --processes option, a to toggle the --accumulated option, q to quit or i to change the priority of a thread or a process' thread(s). Any other key will force a refresh.
Specifically, you might be looking for this option:
-a, --accumulated
Show accumulated I/O instead of bandwidth. In this mode, iotop shows the amount of I/O processes have done since iotop started.
