The job of the system admin is never done. Security, software rollouts, updates, user management, network I/O, you name it, and the admin has to do it. All those duties can bog the admin down during their day. When one thing goes wrong, all other things might get shoved to the side.

Linux admins have a veritable cornucopia of command line tools to select from. But with so many tools at your disposal, which should you use? Jack Wallen, writing for TechRepublic Premium, focuses on the easiest to use tools for each system monitoring task.

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CPU USAGE

One of the very first admin tools I ever used was the top command. Back in my early days of using Linux, I always found it really cool to open a terminal window and just leave top running all day. I felt like I was getting a glimpse into something special. What does top do? It’s actually not all that magical. When you run the top command you are presented with specific information about all of the processes currently running on your system.

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TIME SAVED: Crafting this content required 14 hours of dedicated writing, editing and research.