I don’t I rather run top to see some stats of the system. Mostly I am checking for slow downs and that shows me load mem consumption etc.
Diskspace is rarely the case
Most of the time some database connection is laggy
atop is best top. One of the few bits of software I evangelise.
Writes to replayable binary logfile with 10 minute system-state snapshots and uses process accounting to ensure it see's every process during that time.
Gives more metrics than any other top; including network, disk and all the counters that you have to check the man page to know what they refer to.
Its counterpart atopsar lets you replay the data for specific stats in an easily viewable format; i.e; - atopsar -m - this shows the memory stats for todays logfile in 10 minute increments.
It goes on every single server I manage without exception. With atop you can actually see why it died instead of guessing from old log entries.
I sometimes hear about “atop”, wonder “Why don’t I have this installed?”, install it, discover that it starts (and requires) two additional daemon processes, at which point I remember, and promptly uninstall it again.
Yes; the bit that manages the process accounting and the other bit for writing the log files...
Personally I consider two processes and 40MB of ram to be negligible for the benefits it brings.
You can indeed use it as a standalone top without either of these processes too. You're just giving up one of the main benefits (replayable logs) outside of the extra stats.
