Watch and stop processes

The Processes tab is SysVitals's answer to htop: it shows every program running on the machine, how much CPU and memory each uses, and lets you stop one. Press 1 to open it.

Read the table

Column	Meaning
PID	Process ID, the number the system uses for this process.
USER	The user it runs as.
S	State: R running, S sleeping, D waiting on disk, Z zombie, and so on.
CPU%	Share of one CPU core used since the last refresh. Can exceed 100 on multi-core machines.
MEM%	Share of total memory, by resident size.
RSS	Resident memory: the RAM the process is actually using.
THR	Number of threads.
TIME	Total CPU time used since it started.
COMMAND	The full command line.

Rows using more than 50 % CPU are shown in yellow. CPU and memory are measured the same way htop does, so the numbers track closely with it.

Sort the table

Press a letter to sort by that column:

Key	Sorts by	First press
c	CPU%	Highest first
m	MEM%	Highest first
t	TIME	Highest first
p	PID	Lowest first
n	Name	A to Z

Press the same key again to reverse the order. SysVitals starts sorted by CPU, highest first.

Filter the table

1. Press /. The bottom line changes to Search: followed by what you type.

2. Type part of a program name or command line, such as firefox, or a full PID, such as 4321. The table narrows as you type. Upper and lower case are treated the same.

3. Press Enter to keep the filter. The bottom line shows filter:'firefox' while it is on.

To clear the filter, press / and then Esc, or switch to another tab and back. Backspace deletes the last character while you type.

Show kernel threads

Kernel threads are tasks run by the Linux kernel itself. They are hidden by default, as in htop, and counted separately in the header as kthr. Press K (Shift + k) to show them; their command appears in square brackets, like [kworker/0:1]. Press K again to hide them.

Stop a process

WARNING

Stopping a process ends it. Any unsaved work in that program is lost, and stopping a system process can make the machine unstable. Check the PID and name in the prompt before you confirm.

1. Move the highlight to the process with ↑ and ↓, or filter for it first.

2. Press x or F9. The bottom line turns red and asks, for example, Signal PID 4321 (firefox)? [t] SIGTERM [k] SIGKILL [Esc] cancel.

3. Choose a signal:

   • Press t for SIGTERM, a polite request to quit. Most programs save state and exit cleanly. Try this first.
   • Press k for SIGKILL, which ends the process at once. The program gets no chance to clean up. Use it only when SIGTERM does not work.
   • Press Esc, or any other key, to cancel.

4. Read the bottom line. It shows sent SIGTERM to 4321, or kill failed: with a reason.

You can only signal your own processes. For other users' processes you see kill failed: Operation not permitted; run SysVitals with sudo if you really need to stop one.

Next steps

• Network connections and ports
• Key reference