You can use the vmstat command to monitor system performance in real-time. vmstat is a tool able to collect stats about system’s memory and processor resource utilization in real time. In order to have an always-active monitoring shell, prepend the watch command to the vmstat command:
~$ watch vmstat -a -S M
Every 2.0s: vmstat -a -S M
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
r b swpd free inact active si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
0 0 0 2961 268 358 0 0 145 38 75 119 0 0 97 2 0Furthermore, if you’d like to specifically monitor disk reads/writes, you can execute the following command:
~$ watch vmstat -d
Every 2.0s: vmstat -d
disk- ------------reads------------ ------------writes----------- -----IO------
total merged sectors ms total merged sectors ms cur sec
sr0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
sda 24616 4031 867336 196140 2424 10626 227728 1087716 0 54