Process & Resource Monitoring (Top/Htop/Ps/Systemd)

Stop watching htop blink when you need actual history

🧩 The Challenge

Dealing with a process that keeps spiking CPU usage for a split second is a total nightmare because by the time your eyes hit the screen, the spike is gone. You’re left guessing which PID is actually responsible for nuking your server’s performance.

💡 The Fix

Use pidstat to grab historical snapshots of CPU usage over time rather than just looking at the live view. It’s way more accurate for troubleshooting those “why did the load average jump?” moments.

pidstat -u 1 5

⚙️ Why It Works

Setting the interval to one second over five iterations forces the kernel to report back on every process that actually consumed cycles during that window, effectively logging the spike you missed.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Pipe it into grep if you’re hunting one specific process and don’t want the wall of text.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 8/13/2026