iotop

Iotop is a command line tool that allows monitoring of disk I/O usage in real-time. It provides a detailed overview of the processes responsible for disk I/O operations, indicating the amount of data being read from or written to the disk by each process. This tool is particularly useful for system administrators and developers to identify potential performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot disk-related issues. Iotop provides information such as the process ID (PID), user, priority, and the amount of I/O being performed by each process. It also displays the type of I/O operation (read or write), the device being used for I/O, and the path of the accessed file. The data is presented in a dynamic color-coded interface that updates in real-time, making it easy to identify the processes consuming significant disk resources. Iotop can be executed with root privileges to gain a complete view of all disk I/O activities system-wide. It can also display accumulated I/O over a specific time interval, helping to analyze disk usage trends. The tool uses the Linux kernel's accounting information and is available for various Linux distributions. It provides a convenient and efficient way to monitor disk I/O and gain insights into system performance.