When atop is started, it switches on the process accounting mechanism in the kernel. This forces the kernel to write a record with accounting information to the accounting file whenever a process ends. Apart from the kernel administration related to the running processes, atop also interprets the accounting records on disk with every interval; in this way atop can also show the activity of a process during the interval in which it is finished.
Read answer to: "Show All Running Processes in Linux"
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