How to display cpu wise usage using top command on FreeBSD Unix operating system

Author: Vivek Gite Last updated: February 25, 2017 2 comments

I recently switched from Linux to FreeBSD. On Linux, I press 1 which show me a breakdown of CPU usage per CPU, but it is not working on FreeBSD. How do I find out the usage of individual CPU core usage using the top command on FreeBSD operating system?

You can easily get the usage of individual cpu core on FreeBSD based system using top command itself.

How to display per-cpu CPU usage statistics on FreeBSD

Type the following command:
$ top -P
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: How to find the usage of Individual cpu core usage on FreeBSD Unix system

From the above output it is clear that I have total 8 core in my system from cpu0 to cpu7 and you can see stats easily. Pass the -C option to turn on CPU display mode. To see each thread for a multithreaded process individually pass the -H option:
$ top -PCH
You can set the environment variable named TOP to set your own defaults. For bash/sh/ksh shell set the following in your shell startup file:
$ export TOP='-P'
OR for tcsh:
$ setenv TOP -P

Say hello to vmstat

You can use the vmstat command as follows:
$ vmstat -P
You should see per-cpu system/user/idle cpu statistics with vmstat as follows

 procs      memory      page                    disks     faults         cpu0     cpu1     cpu2     cpu3     cpu4     cpu5     cpu6     cpu7     
 r b w     avm    fre   flt  re  pi  po    fr  sr ad0 ad1   in   sy   cs us sy id us sy id us sy id us sy id us sy id us sy id us sy id us sy id
 0 2 0   3493M    21G   333   0   0   0   312  36   0   0  236 2769 1281  0  1 99  1  1 99  0  0 99  0  0 99  0  1 99  0  1 99  0  1 99  0  1 99

(Hold your mouse over above box to see full outputs)

Install htop command

Htop is a free (GPL) ncurses-based process viewer for Linux and Unix-like system including FreeBSD. Type the following command to install htop:
$ sudo pkg install htop
Sample outputs:

Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
The following 3 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
	htop: 2.0.2
	libexecinfo: 1.1_3
	lsof: 4.90.g,8

Number of packages to be installed: 3

183 KiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[webserver] Fetching htop-2.0.2.txz: 100%   63 KiB  21.5kB/s    00:03    
[webserver] Fetching libexecinfo-1.1_3.txz: 100%    8 KiB   8.6kB/s    00:01    
[webserver] Fetching lsof-4.90.g,8.txz: 100%  112 KiB  57.3kB/s    00:02    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[webserver] [1/3] Installing libexecinfo-1.1_3...
[webserver] [1/3] Extracting libexecinfo-1.1_3: 100%
[webserver] [2/3] Installing lsof-4.90.g,8...
[webserver] [2/3] Extracting lsof-4.90.g,8: 100%
[webserver] [3/3] Installing htop-2.0.2...
[webserver] [3/3] Extracting htop-2.0.2: 100%

To view stats, type:
$ htop
Sample outputs:

Fig.02: htop command on FreeBSD

See vmstat and top command man page for more info.

🐧 Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix, Open Source/DevOps topics:

RSS feed or Weekly email newsletter
Share on Twitter • Facebook • 2 comments... add one ↓

UP NEXT

Category	List of Unix and Linux commands
File Management	cat
Firewall	Alpine Awall • CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Network Utilities	dig • host • ip • nmap
OpenVPN	CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Package Manager	apk • apt
Processes Management	bg • chroot • cron • disown • fg • jobs • killall • kill • pidof • pstree • pwdx • time
Searching	grep • whereis • which
User Information	groups • id • lastcomm • last • lid/libuser-lid • logname • members • users • whoami • who • w
WireGuard VPN	Alpine • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Firewall • Ubuntu 20.04