I want to write the output of a specific 'top' command to a file. I did some googling and find out that it can be done by using the following command.
top -n 10 -b > top-output.txt
where -n is to specify the number of iterations and -b is for batch mode. This works very well if let top for the 10 iterations. But if i break the running of the command with a Ctrl-C, the output file seems to be empty.
I won't be knowing the number of iterations beforehand, so i need to break it manually. How can i capture the output of top in a file without specifying iterations?
The command which I am trying to use precisely is
top -b | grep init > top-output.txt
and break it whenever i want. But it doesn't work.
EDIT: To give more context to the question, I have a Java Code which invokes a tool with an Input File. As in the tool takes a file as an input and runs for some time, then takes the next file and so on. I have a set of 100,000 files which need to be fed to the tool. So now I am trying to monitor that specific tool ( It runs as a process in Linux). I cannot capture the whole of 'top' s data as the file as would be too huge with unwanted data. How to capture the system stats of just that process and write it to a file using top?
for me top -b > test.txt will store all output from top ok even if i break it with ctrl-c. I suggest you dump first, and then grep the resulting file.
How about using while loop and -n 1:
while sleep 3; do
top -b -n1 | grep init > top-output.txt
done
It looks like the output is not writing to the file until all iterations are finished. You could solve this by wrapping with an external loop like this:
touch top-output.txt
while true; do
top -b | grep init >> top-output.txt
done
Here is the 1-liner I like to use on my mac:
top -o -pid -l 1 | grep "some regexp"
Cheers.
As pointed out by #Thor in a comment, you just need to ensure that grep is not buffering arbitrarily but per-line with the --line-buffered option:
top -bn 10 | grep 'init' --line-buffered | tee top-output.txt
Without grep-ing, redirecting the output of top to a file works just fine, interrupt included.
Solved this issue. This works even if you press Ctrl+c Even I was facing the same issue when I wanted to log Cpu%.
Execute this shell script:
#!/bin/sh
while true; do
echo "$(top -b -n 1 | grep init)" | tee -a top-output.log
sleep 1
done
You can grep anything you wanna extract out of top command, use this script to store it to a file.
-b : Batch mode operation
Starts top in Batch mode, which could be useful for sending output from top to other programs or
to a file. In this mode, top will not accept input and runs until the iterations limit you've set
with the -n command-line option or until killed.
-n number, this option specifies the maximum number of iterations, or frames, top should produce before ending. Here I've used -n 1.
Do man top for more details
tee -a enables the output to be visible on the console and also stores the output onto the file. -a option appends the output to the file.
Here, I have given an interval of 1 second. You can mention any other interval.
Source for explanations of -b and -n: manpages
man top
Kruthika
CTRL+C is not a ideal solution due to control stays in CLI. You can use below command which dumps top output to a file:
top -n 1 -b > top-output.txt
I had the exact same problem...
here was my line:
top -b -u myUser | grep -v Prog.sh | grep Prog > myFile.txt
It would create myFile.txt but it would be empty when I Ctrl+C'd it. So after I kicked off my top command, then I started a SECOND top process. When I found the first top's PID (took some trial and error), and I killed it thru the second top, the first top wrote to the file as expected.
Hope that helps!
If you wish to run the top command in background (just not to worry about logout/sleep, etc) - you can make use of nohup or batch job or cron or screen.
Using nohup (stands for : No Hang Up):
Say suppose if you save the top command in a file called top-exec.sh with following content :
top -p <PID> -b > /tmp/top.log
You can replace the top command for whatever process you are interested in.
Then, You can execute top-exec.sh using nohup as follows :
$> nohup top-exec.sh &
This will redirect all the output of top command to a file named "top.log".
Set the -n argument to 1 it tells top how many frames it will produce before exits.
top -b -n 1 > ~/mytopview.txt
or even
myvar=`top -b -n 1`
echo $myvar
From the top command, we can see all the processes with their PID (Process ID).
To print top output for only one process, use the following command:
$ top –p PID
To save top command of any process to a file, use the following command:
top -p $PROCESS_ID -b > top.log
where > redirects standard output to a file.
Related
I have a bash script, that outputs top most CPU intensive processes every second to the terminal.
tmp=$(ps -e -eo pid,cmd,%mem,%cpu,user --sort=-%cpu | head -n 11)
printf "\n%s\n" "$tmp[pid]"
I know that I can move my cursor to the predeclared position, but that fails every time terminal is not cleared.
I could also just go to the beginning of the line and write over it, but that again makes a problem when current output is shorter that the previous and when the number of lines is not the same as it was at the previous output.
Is there a way to completely erase the previous output and write from there?
Yes, you can clear a part of the screen before each iteration (see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/297502/clear-half-of-the-screen-from-the-command-line), but the function watch does it for you. Try:
watch -n 1 "ps -e -eo pid,cmd,%mem,%cpu,user --sort=-%cpu | head -n 11"
I am monitoring the new files created in a folder in linux. Every now and then I issue an "ls -ltr" in it. But I wish there was a program/script that would automatically print it, and only the latest entries. I did a short while loop to list it, but it would repeat the entries that were not new and it would keep my screen rolling up when there were no new files. I've learned about "watch", which does show what I want and refreshes every N seconds, but I don't want a ncurses interface, I'm looking for something like tail:
continuous
shows only the new stuff
prints in my terminal, so I can run it in the background and do other things and see the output every now and then getting mixed with whatever I'm doing :D
Summarizing: get the input, compare to a previous input, output only what is new.
Something that do that doesn't sound like such an odd tool, I can see it being used for other situations also, so I would expect it to already exist, but I couldn't find anything. Suggestions?
You can use the very handy command watch
watch -n 10 "ls -ltr"
And you will get a ls every 10 seconds.
And if you add a tail -10 you will only get the 10 newest.
watch -n 10 "ls -ltr|tail -10"
If you have access to inotifywait (available from the inotify-tools package if you are on Debian/Ubuntu) you could write a script like this:
#!/bin/bash
WATCH=/tmp
inotifywait -q -m -e create --format %f $WATCH | while read event
do
ls -ltr $WATCH/$event
done
This is a one-liner that won't give you the same information that ls does, but it will print out the filename:
inotifywait -q -m -e create --format %w%f /some/directory
This works in cygwin and Linux. Some of the previous solutions which write a file will cause the disk to thrash.
This script does not have that problem:
SIG=1
SIG0=SIG
while [ $SIG != 0 ] ; do
while [ $SIG = $SIG0 ] ; do
SIG=`ls -1 | md5sum | cut -c1-32`
sleep 10
done
SIG0=$SIG
ls -lrt | tail -n 1
done
In terminal, sometimes I would like to display the standard output and also save it as a backup. but if I use redirection ( > &> etc), it does not display the output in the terminal anymore.
I think I can do for example ls > localbackup.txt | cat localbackup.txt. But it just doesn't feel right. Is there any shortcut to achieve this?
Thank you!
tee is the command you are looking for:
ls | tee localbackup.txt
In addition to using tee to duplicate the output (and it's worth mentioning that tee is able to append to the file instead of overwriting it, by using tee -a, so that you can run several commands in sequence and retain all of the output), you can also use tail -f to "follow" the output file from a parallel process (e.g. a separate terminal):
command1 >localbackup.txt # create output file
command2 >>localbackup.txt # append to output
and from a separate terminal, at the same time:
tail -f localbackup.txt # this will keep outputting as text is appended to the file
I am working on a Java EE application where its logs will be generated inside a Linux server .
I have used the command tail -f -n -10000 MyLog
It displayed last 1000 lines from that log file .
Now I pressed Ctrl + c in Putty to disconnect the logs updation ( as i am feared it may be updated with new requests and I will loose my data )
In the displayed result, how can I search for a particular keyword ?? (Used / String name to search but it's not working)
Pipe your output to PAGER.
tail -f -n LINE_CNT LOG_FILE | less
then you can use
/SEARCH_STRING
Two ways:
tail -n 10000 MyLog| grep -i "search phrase"
tail -f -n 10000 MyLog | less
The 2nd method will allow you to search with /. It will only search down but you can press g to go back to the top.
Edit: On testing it seems method 2 doesn't work all that well... if you hit the end of the file it will freeze till you ctrl+c the tail command.
You need to redirect the output from tail into a search utility (e.g. grep). You could do this in two steps: save the output to a file, then search in the file; or in one go: pipe the ouput to the search utility
To see what goes into the file (so you can hit Ctlr+c) you can use the tee command, which duplicates the output to the screen and to a file:
tail -f -n -10000 MyLog | tee <filename>
Then search within the file.
If you want to pipe the result into the search utility, you can use the same trick as above, but use your search program instead of tee
Controlling terminal output on the fly
While running any command in a terminal such as Putty you can use CTRL-S and CTRL-Q to stop and start output to the Putty terminal.
Excluding lines using grep
If you want to exclude lines that contain a specific pattern use grep -v the following would remove all line that contain the string INFO
tail -f logfile | grep -v INFO
Show lines that do not contain the words INFO or DEBUG
tail -f logfile | grep -v -E 'INFO|DEBUG'
Finally, the MOTHER AND FATHER of all tailing tools is xtail.pl
If you have perl on your host xtail.pl is a very nice tool to learn and in a nutshell you can use it to tail multiple files. Very handy.
You can just open it with less command
less logfile_name
when you open the file you can use this guide here
Tip: I suggest, first to use G to go to the end of the file and then to you use Backward Search
In bash, calling foo would display any output from that command on the stdout.
Calling foo > output would redirect any output from that command to the file specified (in this case 'output').
Is there a way to redirect output to a file and have it display on stdout?
The command you want is named tee:
foo | tee output.file
For example, if you only care about stdout:
ls -a | tee output.file
If you want to include stderr, do:
program [arguments...] 2>&1 | tee outfile
2>&1 redirects channel 2 (stderr/standard error) into channel 1 (stdout/standard output), such that both is written as stdout. It is also directed to the given output file as of the tee command.
Furthermore, if you want to append to the log file, use tee -a as:
program [arguments...] 2>&1 | tee -a outfile
$ program [arguments...] 2>&1 | tee outfile
2>&1 dumps the stderr and stdout streams.
tee outfile takes the stream it gets and writes it to the screen and to the file "outfile".
This is probably what most people are looking for. The likely situation is some program or script is working hard for a long time and producing a lot of output. The user wants to check it periodically for progress, but also wants the output written to a file.
The problem (especially when mixing stdout and stderr streams) is that there is reliance on the streams being flushed by the program. If, for example, all the writes to stdout are not flushed, but all the writes to stderr are flushed, then they'll end up out of chronological order in the output file and on the screen.
It's also bad if the program only outputs 1 or 2 lines every few minutes to report progress. In such a case, if the output was not flushed by the program, the user wouldn't even see any output on the screen for hours, because none of it would get pushed through the pipe for hours.
Update: The program unbuffer, part of the expect package, will solve the buffering problem. This will cause stdout and stderr to write to the screen and file immediately and keep them in sync when being combined and redirected to tee. E.g.:
$ unbuffer program [arguments...] 2>&1 | tee outfile
Another way that works for me is,
<command> |& tee <outputFile>
as shown in gnu bash manual
Example:
ls |& tee files.txt
If ‘|&’ is used, command1’s standard error, in addition to its standard output, is connected to command2’s standard input through the pipe; it is shorthand for 2>&1 |. This implicit redirection of the standard error to the standard output is performed after any redirections specified by the command.
For more information, refer redirection
You can primarily use Zoredache solution, but If you don't want to overwrite the output file you should write tee with -a option as follow :
ls -lR / | tee -a output.file
Something to add ...
The package unbuffer has support issues with some packages under fedora and redhat unix releases.
Setting aside the troubles
Following worked for me
bash myscript.sh 2>&1 | tee output.log
Thank you ScDF & matthew your inputs saved me lot of time..
Using tail -f output should work.
In my case I had the Java process with output logs. The simplest solution to display output logs and redirect them into the file(named logfile here) was:
my_java_process_run_script.sh |& tee logfile
Result was Java process running with output logs displaying and
putting them into the file with name logfile
You can do that for your entire script by using something like that at the beginning of your script :
#!/usr/bin/env bash
test x$1 = x$'\x00' && shift || { set -o pipefail ; ( exec 2>&1 ; $0 $'\x00' "$#" ) | tee mylogfile ; exit $? ; }
# do whaetever you want
This redirect both stderr and stdout outputs to the file called mylogfile and let everything goes to stdout at the same time.
It is used some stupid tricks :
use exec without command to setup redirections,
use tee to duplicates outputs,
restart the script with the wanted redirections,
use a special first parameter (a simple NUL character specified by the $'string' special bash notation) to specify that the script is restarted (no equivalent parameter may be used by your original work),
try to preserve the original exit status when restarting the script using the pipefail option.
Ugly but useful for me in certain situations.
Bonus answer since this use-case brought me here:
In the case where you need to do this as some other user
echo "some output" | sudo -u some_user tee /some/path/some_file
Note that the echo will happen as you and the file write will happen as "some_user" what will NOT work is if you were to run the echo as "some_user" and redirect the output with >> "some_file" because the file redirect will happen as you.
Hint: tee also supports append with the -a flag, if you need to replace a line in a file as another user you could execute sed as the desired user.
< command > |& tee filename # this will create a file "filename" with command status as a content, If a file already exists it will remove existed content and writes the command status.
< command > | tee >> filename # this will append status to the file but it doesn't print the command status on standard_output (screen).
I want to print something by using "echo" on screen and append that echoed data to a file
echo "hi there, Have to print this on screen and append to a file"
tee is perfect for this, but this will also do the job
ls -lr / > output | cat output