Linux iotop Utility - purpose and functions

The iotop utility in Linux is a tool that allows you to track and analyze disk activity on the system. It shows the processes actively reading or writing data to disk, as well as the amount of data transferred by each process.

The functionality of the utility

Iotop allows you to see which processes are loading the disk and which files they are processing. This can be useful for identifying performance issues, finding bottlenecks, or tracking malware activity.

iotop works interactively and provides real-time information. It displays a list of processes, the activity of each I/O process, the number of read and write operations, and disk space usage.

How do I install iotop?

To install iotop on Ubuntu or Debian, you can use the following command:

After installation, you can start iotop using the command:

The utility requires root rights or the use of a command with sudo to access information about the disk activity of all processes.Iotop also offers several command-line options for configuring output and filtering data. For example, you can use the "-o" flag to sort processes by disk space usage, or the "-P" flag to display only certain processes.

More detailed information about the available options and the use of iotop can be found in the user manual or by running the "man iotop" command in the terminal.