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Hosting Operations

Read-only, can be slow

Find the Processes Burning CPU

You need to identify which processes are using the most CPU without changing system state.

Command

ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,pcpu,pmem,comm,args --sort=-pcpu | head -n 10

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Can create load on large logs, directories, filesystems, or process tables.

When not to use it: Do not use it as the only signal for long-term performance diagnosis; pair it with uptime and memory checks.

Expected output

A sorted process list with the highest CPU consumers near the top.

System impact

Read-only, can be slow. Nothing changes. The command reads the process table and sorts by CPU use.

Scope this to the smallest useful path or service on busy systems.

Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.

When to use it

Use when load is high or the machine feels slow and you need to find CPU-heavy processes.

When not to use it

Do not use it as the only signal for long-term performance diagnosis; pair it with uptime and memory checks.

Watch this command run

Command transcript

This sanitized transcript shows the commands and output shape without exposing host details.

demo@lab:~$

$ uptime

 12:32:44 up 18 days,  3:11,  2 users,  load average: 3.91, 2.44, 1.08

$ ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,pcpu,pmem,comm,args --sort=-pcpu | head -n 10

  PID  PPID STAT %CPU %MEM COMMAND         COMMAND
 1842     1 R    86.4  4.2  app-worker     /srv/app/worker --jobs
 1907     1 S    12.8  1.1  nginx          nginx: worker process
 2011     1 S     4.5  7.9  postgres       postgres: checkpointer
View commands shown

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Commands shown

  1. uptime
  2. ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,pcpu,pmem,comm,args --sort=-pcpu | head -n 10

next steps

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Memory pressure can look like a slow app, a stuck deploy, or random crashes.

ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,pcpu,pmem,rss,comm,args --sort=-pmem | head -n 10
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The server felt slow. Memory pressure was the first thing to rule out.

ps -eo pid,comm,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%mem | head
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Find Directories Burning Inodes

Inode cleanup starts by finding the directory with too many files.

find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var/cache/app -xdev -type f -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
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Find Top 404 URLs

The missing file was not random. The access log had a pattern.

awk '$9==404 {print $7}' /var/log/nginx/access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
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Find the Newest Build Logs First

The failing file is usually one of the newest artifacts.

find artifacts logs -type f \( -name '*.log' -o -name '*.txt' \) -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM %p\n' | sort -r | head
Study mapping

Use this as independent command practice: read the notes, predict the output, then compare it with the example before using a real shell.

  • lpic1:103-gnu-unix-commands
  • lfcs:essential-commands
  • lfcs:operations-deployment
  • lfcs:services-logs
  • linuxplus:automation-scripting
  • linuxplus:provisional
  • risk:read-only

Useful for

  • LPIC-1 style command-line practice
  • LFCS style performance tasks
  • Linux+ style troubleshooting review

Independent study support only. No affiliation, endorsement, exam dumps, or real exam questions.