A free tool to analyze AIX and Linux performance

One of the tools I use to monitor performance on IBM AIX 5.3 and Linux is NMON. Using nmon, you can monitor CPU, memory, network, disk, filesystems, NFS and Top Processes.

Install Nmon

CentOS users need to install nmon from rpmforge/repoforge repository. It is not present in Epel.

CentOs 4 :
i386     rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm

x86_64   rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el4.rf.x86_64.rpm

CentOs5 :
i386     rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

x86_64   rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

CnetOs6 :
i686     rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm

x86_64   rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

sudo yum install nmon
sudo apt-get install nmon

Usage :

$ nmon
And then choose what information you want to be displayed: C – for CPU; M – for Memory; T – for Processes

Keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts can be used turn on (and off) statistics about various components:

   c = CPU                 l = CPU Long-term   – = Faster screen updates
   m = Memory          j = Filesystems          + = Slower screen updates
   d = Disks               n = Network               V = Virtual Memory       
   r = Resource         N = NFS                     v = Verbose hints        
   k = kernel               t = Top-processes        .  = only busy disks/procs
   h = more options                                       q = Quit                  

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