# sorting output from top -m io -o size



## jostrowski (Nov 7, 2009)

I'm trying to use top to view the processes using the most io on my system, but when I run top -m io, it gives me a view of some of what appear to be the higher io hogs, but the next time top refreshes, it shows a bunch of processes using very little io, and all the large stuff no longer shows up in the output. Is there any way to get top to sort the output after the first screen refresh? I've tried adding -o size, but once again, after the first screen refresh, I see only processes doing hardly anything at all. This is on FreeBSD 7.2.


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 7, 2009)

The first screen of 'top -m io' is the current running total. After that, it will only show the activity per interval. Sorting by size doesn't do much, because you're actually sorting by memory size (press 'm', and you'll see). I don't think there are a lot of additional views for the '-m io' mode of top, really.

You could try [cmd=]while x=x; do top -n -m io ; sleep 2 ; done[/cmd] in sh or bash. I have no idea what sort order that is


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