The top command in Linux is a system monitoring tool that provides a dynamic, real-time view of the processes running on a system along with details about resource usage such as CPU, memory, and swap usage. The command also displays system load averages, which indicate how busy the system is. The command can be customized to show only the information that is relevant to the user, such as sorting by a specific field, changing the units of memory, or highlighting the processes that consume the most resources. Overall, the package is useful for identifying and managing the processes that affect the system performance and stability to allow you to better manage your server.

Using and Understanding top

Once you’ve just gotten access to your new server, you can check the server load by running top. Running the top command will give you a screen similar to the one below.

Key information pieces that can be retrieved from top are listed below.

• The current time, system uptime, number of users, and load averages.
• The total number of processes, running processes, sleeping processes, stopped processes, and zombie processes.
• The percentage of CPU usage by user processes, system processes, idle processes, and waiting processes.
• The amount of physical memory and swap memory used and free.
• The list of processes sorted by a field (default is CPU usage), showing the process ID, user name, priority, nice value, virtual memory size, resident memory size, share memory size, state, percentage of CPU usage, percentage of memory usage, and command name or line.

Top’s Upper Section Description

Looking at the top section of the top output, as shown below, can reveal key information.

The explanation will be done left to right, line by line.

1. 1. System uptime and current logged user count is displayed as the first piece of information within the block and is shown in hours and days along with the current time along with the number of logged users

      top - 10:16:06 up 18 days, 15:58

   2. Load averages are presented in 1, 5. and 15 minute intervals.

      load average: 4.00, 3.36, 1.77

   3. Total tasks and their status are presented as running, sleeping, stopped, and zombie.

      Tasks: 154 total, 5 running, 149 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

      1. The running state means that the process is either executing on the CPU or waiting for the CPU. 
      2. The sleeping state means that the process is waiting for some event to occur, such as user input or disk I/O. 
      3. The stopped state means that the process has been suspended by a signal, such as Ctrl+Z. 
      4. The zombie state means that the process has terminated but its parent process has not yet read its exit status.
   4. CPUs status and activity listed as us, sy, ni, id, wa, hi, si, and st.

      %Cpu(s): 99.3 us, 0.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 0.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.3 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st

      1. us: user CPU time, the time spent on user-level processes.
      2. sy: system CPU time, the time spent on kernel-level processes.
      3. ni: nice CPU time, the time spent on user-level processes with a positive nice value, which have lower priority than normal processes.
      4. id: idle CPU time, the time spent on idle tasks, such as waiting for I/O or other events.
      5. wa: I/O wait CPU time, the time spent on waiting for I/O operations to complete.
      6. hi: hardware interrupt CPU time, the time spent on handling hardware interrupts, such as keyboard or mouse input.
      7. si: software interrupt CPU time, the time spent on handling software interrupts, such as network packets or signals.
      8. st: steal CPU time, the time spent on involuntary wait by virtual CPUs while the hypervisor is servicing another virtual processor.
   5. Memory and Swap usage is displayed with total, free, used, and buff/cached and available memory values. The MiB Mem and MiB Swap sections in the top output show the physical and virtual memory utilization of the system respectively.

      MiB Mem : 1763.9 total, 204.4 free, 748.4 used, 1011.9 buff/cache
      MiB Swap: 4096.0 total, 3596.7 free, 499.2 used, 1015.4 avail Mem

      1. The MiB Mem section has four columns: total, free, used, and buff/cache. 
         1. The total column shows the total amount of physical memory installed on the system.
         2. The free column shows the amount of memory that is not allocated to any process or buffer. 
         3. The used column shows the amount of memory that is allocated to processes or buffers.
         4. The buff/cache column shows the amount of memory that is used for caching files or other data for faster access.
      2. The MiB Swap section has four columns: total, free, used, and avail Mem. 
         1. The total column shows the total amount of swap space configured on the system. 
         2. Swap space is a portion of the disk that is used as an extension of the physical memory when the system runs out of memory. 
         3. The free column shows the amount of swap space that is not in use. 
         4. The used column shows the amount of swap space that is in use. 
         5. The avail Mem column shows the amount of memory available for starting new applications, without swapping.

Top’s Lower Section Description

Looking at the top section of the top output, as shown below, shows command and services currently running, by which user, and how much load are they adding to the system.

• PID: The process ID, a unique number that identifies each process.
• USER: The user name or ID that owns the process.
• PR: The priority of the process, which determines how much CPU time it gets.
• NI: The nice value of the process, which affects its priority. A lower nice value means a higher priority.
• VIRT: The virtual memory size of the process, which includes the code, data, and shared libraries.
• RES: The resident memory size of the process, which is the amount of physical memory it is using.
• SHR: The shared memory size of the process, which is the amount of memory it shares with other processes.
• S: The status of the process, which can be one of the following:
  • R: Running or runnable, meaning it is either executing or waiting for CPU time.
  • S: Sleeping or interruptible, meaning it is waiting for an event to complete.
  • D: Uninterruptible sleep, meaning it is waiting for I/O to complete and cannot be interrupted by signals.
  • T: Stopped or traced, meaning it is stopped by a signal or being debugged.
  • Z: Zombie or defunct, meaning it has terminated but its parent process has not reaped it.
• CPU: The percentage of CPU time used by the process in the last sampling period.
• MEM: The percentage of physical memory used by the process.
• TIME: The total CPU time used by the process since it started.
• COMMAND: The name and arguments of the command that started the process.

Understanding Load Averages Values

CPUs come in many setups but what we need to know is that what we have can be a single core or a multi core CPU with the potential capability of hyperthreading. 

A load of 1 in any of your averages means that there is enough load to fully use a single core of your available cores. A load of 4 would mean that there is enough load to occupy 4 of your system’s available cores. 

With hyperthreading, if the CPU has 6 cores with hyperthreading, the count means that there are 12 cores in the system as work can be distributed better with hyprthreading and is calculated in that manner.

The number of cores in your system can be found using the nproc command as shown below.

psuissa@psuissa-WS-5524:~$ nproc
8

When you have more load than available cores is when the system gets overloaded and will display delays in response time and ability to serve web pages properly. You could view running processes as explained above to stop any that are causing high load but also allow you to investigate as to which and why it is happening.

How Can Hivelocity Help me?

We know that constantly checking these metrics can be a pain. At Hivelocity we offer a few Managed Services packages that will do all the work for you. We install tools that actively monitor this and many other metrics of your server and will alert us if there are any issues.

This will allow you the peace of mind of making sure your hardware is carefully watched, without having to constantly monitor it yourself. As a result, there is less risk of downtime and you save time and energy in the process.

To learn more about adding Managed Services to one of your servers, or purchasing a Managed Server from Hivelocity, open a chat session and our account managers will be happy to assist!

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What is Netstat?

Netstat is a tool in Linux which can be used to monitor and report information on network services. Netstat is actually a series of commands designed to report statistics on various aspects of your network, including which processes are using which ports.

Using the Netstat Command

Typically, Netstat displays all the ports in use by all processes, however, by adding the grep command, you can limit those results to only a specific designated port.

For example, if you wish to see which service is running on port 80, you just need to execute the following command:

netstat -ant | grep 80

Next, if you want to check the number of connections on port 80, you can use the command:

netstat -an |grep :80 |wc –l

Lastly, if you only want to see which ports your server is listening on, enter the following:

netstat -ant | grep LISTEN

And there you have it!

Popular Links

Looking for more information on NetStat? Search our Knowledge Base!

Interested in more articles about Statistics? Navigate to our Categories page using the bar on the left or check out these popular articles:

• What are domlogs?
• MRTG Installation and Configuration
• Understanding the Server Load Metric of Your Server

Popular tags within this category include: Netstat, MRTG, AWStats, Webalizer, and more.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Use the search bar at the top to search our entire Knowledge Base.

The Hivelocity Difference

Seeking a better Dedicated Server solution? In the market for Private Cloud or Colocation services? Check out Hivelocity’s extensive list of products for great deals and offers.

With best-in-class customer service, affordable pricing, a wide-range of fully-customizable options, and a network like no other, Hivelocity is the hosting solution you’ve been waiting for.

Unsure which of our services is best for your particular needs? Call or live chat with one of our sales agents today and see the difference Hivelocity can make for you.

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No logs for any of the stats program logged in /usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log

Reason: The memory assigned for the cpanel scripts and applications is falling short.

In that case, increase the memory.

WHM >> Tweak Settings >> Max cPanel process memory (minimum: 128)
(The maximum memory a cPanel process can use before it is killed off.).

Increase this value so that Awstats runs successfully.

It can be set to “unlimited” if required.

The post How to resolve the blank page issue for awstats? appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

If the domlogs are removed, you will be unable to view the stats for that specific domain. However, the stats will be updated the next coming day, and you will be able to view these newly generated stats, just not the old ones as those have been deleted.

If your domlogs are consuming too much space, you can try deleting older files (those from past a few weeks or months ago), which will allow you to free up some extra space.

Popular Links

Looking for more information on domlogs? Search our Knowledge Base!

Interested in more articles about Statistics? Navigate to our Categories page using the bar on the left or check out these popular articles:

• How to Monitor Network Services Using Netstat Command
• MRTG Installation and Configuration
• Understanding the Server Load Metric of Your Server

Popular tags within this category include: Netstat, MRTG, AWStats, Webalizer, and more.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Use the search bar at the top to search our entire Knowledge Base.

The Hivelocity Difference

Seeking a better Dedicated Server solution? In the market for Private Cloud or Colocation services? Check out Hivelocity’s extensive list of products for great deals and offers.

With best-in-class customer service, affordable pricing, a wide-range of fully-customizable options, and a network like no other, Hivelocity is the hosting solution you’ve been waiting for.

Unsure which of our services is best for your particular needs? Call or live chat with one of our sales agents today and see the difference Hivelocity can make for you.

The post What are Domlogs? appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

1] First method is Via WHM control panel
2] Second method is Via SSH Root Login

First method: Via WHM control panel

Step 1: Login to your server using the root password.
Step 2: Go to Server Configuration >> Tweak Settings
Step 3: The reload of the page will present you with several options such as cPAddons, Display, Domains, Logging, Mail, Notifications, PHP, Redirection, SQL, Security, Software, Stats Programs, etc…
Step 4: Hit the “Stats and Logs” to get the options listed under it.
Step 5: Search for “Allows users to update AWstats from cPanel” on the page and select the “On” button on the right side of the page and save the settings.

Second method: via SSH Root Login

Step 1: Login to your server using the root password.
Step 2: Specify the following path to open the users Awstats directory.

#/home/cpaneluser/tmp/awstats/

Step 3: In the above directory, search for “awstats.yourdomain.com.conf” file and edit the file using an editor. We have used vi editor.

#vi awstats.yourdomain.com.conf

Step 4: Find the following line in that file and change the value from zero (0) to (1) to enable the “Update now” option. Note that the value “1” enables the option and value “0” disables the option.

AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0

To enable change the value to “1”.

Step 5: Enter the following command to save the settings and quit the editor:

esc :wq!

Step 6: You need to run the following script for changes to take effect:

#/scripts/runweblogs username

The post How to enable update now button awstats? appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

Steps for MRTG installation are documented as

MRTG Installation

Make sure MRTG is NOT installed.
Type: rpm -e mrtg
It should come back with: error: package mrtg is not installed.
wget https://gnutoolbox.com/download/linux/network/tools/mrtg-2.9.17-1cpanel.i386.rpm

We now need to remove some things that are not compatible.

Type:
rpm -e --nodeps libpng10

cd /usr/lib
ln -s libpng.so.3 libpng.so.2

Now we are ready to start MRTG for the first time.

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mrtg restart

This will most likely cause errors, and you will have to run

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mrtg restart

probably 3-5 more times to eliminate all of the errors.
If after restarting 5 times you receive this error: ls: /var/spool/exim/input/*-H: No such file or directory Exit SSH, and then reconnect to your server as root and

Type:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/mrtg restart

That should fix the problem, if not give it 1 day and then restart again and see if the error is fixed. This error is related to files not being created yet

The post Install MRTG appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

Cron file for RedHat: /etc/cron.d/directadmin_cron
Cron file for FreeBSD: /etc/crontab

Edit the cron file and locate the line that looks like the following:

10 0 * * * root echo ‘action=tally&value=all’ >> /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue
That means that the tally will be run 10 minutes after midnight every day.

If you’d like to (for example) run the tally every 4 hours, you’d change it to:

10 */4 * * * root echo ‘action=tally&value=all’ >> /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue

One important thing to remember is that for very large servers, with upwards of 1000 domains, the tally can take a significantly long time to run (up to 2 hours), so if you run a large server, you may not want to run the tally too often.

Once you’ve set the value you want, save the file and reload the cron daemon by runnin the command:

killall -HUP crond

The post Make diskuage, bandwidth and webalizer stats update more frequently appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

This function allows you to view the total amount of bandwidth used on your server per month. Bandwidth usage is shown in total and also broken down per account.

NOTE: Only HTTP, POP mail, and FTP traffic statistics are currently monitored for bandwidth.

Steps

1 To access the Account Information Menu, click on Account Information, on the main screen of your WebHost Manager interface.

2 Click on View Bandwidth Usage.

The post View bandwidth usage appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

This function displays what services are running on your server, as well as server load, memory usage, swap usage, and hard drive space usage. Running services have a green circle next to them, while failed services have a red circle next to them.

Steps

1 To access the Server Status Menu, click on Server Status, on the main screen of your WebHost Manager interface.

2 Click on Service Status.

3 Information about what services are running on your server will be displayed.

The post Service Status appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

This function displays information about the hardware and software configuration on your server. This includes processor type and speed, memory information, system software, drive information, memory usage, and drive space usage.

Steps

1 To access the Server Status Menu, click on Server Status, on the main screen of your WebHost Manager interface.

2 Click on Server Information.

3 Information about your server’s software and hardware will be displayed.

The post Server Information appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.

This function displays a table of the processes that use CPU, memory, and MySQL. The table displays who is using the process, CPU usage %, Memory usage %, and MySQL usage.

Steps

1 To access the Server Status Menu, click on Server Status, on the main screen of your WebHost Manager interface.

2 Click on CPU/Memory/MySQL Usage.

3 Information about the CPU, Memory, and MySQL usage on your server will be displayed.

The post CPU/Memory/MySQL Usage appeared first on Hivelocity Hosting.