Find Top 15 Processes by Memory Usage with ‘top’ in Batch Mode

Similarly to the previous tip about find out top processes by RAM and CPU usage, you can also use top command to view the same information. Perhaps there’s an extra advantage of this approach when compared to the previous one: the “header” of top provides extra information about the current status and usage of the system: the uptime, load average, and total number of processes, to name a few examples.

Find Processes By Memory Usage with top
Find Processes By Memory Usage with top

To display the top 15 processes sorted by memory use in descending order, do:

# top -b -o +%MEM | head -n 22

As opposed to the previous tip, here you have to use +%MEM (note the plus sign) to sort the output in descending order:

List Top 15 Processes By Memory Usage
List Top 15 Processes By Memory Usage

From the command above, the option:

  1. -b : runs top in batch mode
  2. -o : used to specify fields for sorting processes
  3. head utility displays the first few lines of a file and
  4. the -n option is used to specify the number of lines to be displayed.

Note that head utility, by default displays the first ten lines of a file, that is when you do not specify the number of lines to be displayed. Therefore, in the example above, we displayed the first 22 lines of top command output in batch mode.

Redirect or Save ‘top’ Output to File in Linux

Additionally, using top in batch mode allows you to redirect the output to a file for later inspection:

# top -b -o +%MEM | head -n 22 > topreport.txt

As we have seen, the top utility offers us more dynamic information while listing processes on a Linux system, therefore, this approach has an extra advantage compared to using ps utility which we covered in tip one.

But most importantly, you must always run top in batch mode to redirect its output to a file or another process. Additionally, if you have any tips regarding use of top, you can also share them with us via the feedback form below.

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Gabriel Cánepa
Gabriel Cánepa is a GNU/Linux sysadmin and web developer from Villa Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina. He works for a worldwide leading consumer product company and takes great pleasure in using FOSS tools to increase productivity in all areas of his daily work.

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7 Comments

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  1. The following command not working.

    [root@models ~]# top -b -o +%MEM | head -n 22
            top: unknown argument 'o'
    usage:  top -hv | -abcHimMsS -d delay -n iterations [-u user | -U user] -p pid [,pid ...]
    
    [root@models ~]# top -v
            top: procps version 3.2.8
    usage:  top -hv | -abcHimMsS -d delay -n iterations [-u user | -U user] -p pid [,pid ...]
    

    [root@models ~]# uname -r
    2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64
    [root@models ~]# uname -mrs
    Linux 2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64 x86_64
    [root@models ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
    CentOS release 6.6 (Final)

    Reply
  2. top v3.3.10 works fine.
    btw: chrome, xorg, chrome, chrome, meld, chrome, chrome, chrome, java, chrome, chrome, chrome, chrome, chrome, chrome
    it seems I have too much chrome tabs (74 btw)

    Reply
  3. hi, thank you for your good post. when i run bellow command

    # "top -b -o +%MEM | head -n 22" 
    

    I get bellow error :

    [root@mohammad~]# top -b -o +%MEM | head -n 22
            top: unknown argument 'o'
    usage:  top -hv | -abcHimMsS -d delay -n iterations [-u user | -U user] -p pid [,pid ...]
    
    Reply
        • @Leonardo,

          I run the same command on my Centos 6.3 and it worked perfectly, here are the result of command.

          top - 10:31:45 up  7:41,  6 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.11, 0.37
          Tasks: 242 total,   4 running, 238 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
          %Cpu(s):  2.1 us,  0.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 93.5 id,  3.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
          KiB Mem :  2400608 total,    76864 free,  1887976 used,   435768 buff/cache
          KiB Swap:  2097148 total,  1631500 free,   465648 used.   305364 avail Mem 
          
            PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
           2600 root      20   0 4426780 753484   4872 S  0.0 31.4  10:56.10 java
          30694 tecmint   20   0 1556112 290780  17792 S  0.0 12.1   1:04.00 gnome-shell
           9435 tecmint   20   0  915932  96032  53688 R  0.0  4.0   0:09.01 chrome
            891 gdm       20   0 1392976  81972   9016 S  6.2  3.4   6:49.64 gnome-shell
           9680 tecmint   20   0  846812  45624  24120 S  0.0  1.9   0:00.26 chrome
          27554 apache    20   0  598760  41080    720 S  0.0  1.7   0:01.49 httpd
          14467 apache    20   0  684580  39840    860 S  0.0  1.7   0:02.38 httpd
          30958 tecmint   20   0 1101144  38096   1000 S  0.0  1.6   0:00.36 evolution-calen
           2267 mysql     20   0 1038432  37196    288 S  0.0  1.5   0:15.07 mysqld
          14468 apache    20   0  681692  36264    796 S  0.0  1.5   0:01.03 httpd
          27468 apache    20   0  685060  34836    508 S  0.0  1.5   0:02.60 httpd
          27498 apache    20   0  594544  34584    548 S  0.0  1.4   0:00.60 httpd
          27494 apache    20   0  667764  34488    540 S  0.0  1.4   0:00.57 httpd
           9446 tecmint   20   0  486468  30632  21588 S  0.0  1.3   0:00.18 chrome
          27493 apache    20   0  590188  29604    748 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.46 httpd
          
          Reply

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