Atop is an ASCII full-screen performance monitor for Linux that is capable of reporting the activity of all processes even if processes have finished during the interval and daily logging of system and process activity for long-term analysis. To collect information atop switches on the process accounting mechanism in the kernel^[1].

• Crontab: /etc/cron.d/atop -> /usr/share/atop/atop.daily (INTERVAL=600)
• Data storage: /var/log/atop

Usage

• View interactively today recorded activity: atop -r (press t to see next interval)
• atopsar -A^[2]
• atopsar -O Report top 3 processes consuming CPU

Activities

1. Read LWN article about atop: https://lwn.net/Articles/387202/

See also

• sysstat
• acct package and lastcomm command (https://www.gnu.org/software/acct/)
• auditd
• monitoring
• Linux server administration/Performance and Troubleshooting

1. ↑ https://linux.die.net/man/1/atop
2. ↑ https://haydenjames.io/use-atop-linux-server-performance-analysis/