How to Install Htop on Arch Linux

Htop is a free, open-source, interactive system monitor, process viewer, and process manager designed for Linux-based operating systems. It is very similar to Task Manager in the Windows OS used to troubleshoot and kill a process that is utilizing excessive server resources. It helps the system administrator to monitor system load, CPU, memory usage, processes, and more via a command-line interface.

In this post, we will show you how to install and use Htop on Arch Linux.

Step 1 – Configure Repository

By default, the default repository is outdated in Arch Linux, so you will need to modify the default mirror list. You can do it by editing the mirrorlist configuration file:

nano  /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Remove all lines and add the following lines:

## Score: 0.7, United States
Server = http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 0.8, United States
Server = http://lug.mtu.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.nl.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 0.9, United Kingdom
Server = http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 1.5, United Kingdom
Server = http://mirrors.manchester.m247.com/arch-linux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://archlinux.dcc.fc.up.pt/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 6.6, United States
Server = http://mirror.cs.pitt.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 6.7, United States
Server = http://mirrors.acm.wpi.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 6.8, United States
Server = http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 7.1, India
Server = http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Score: 10.1, United States
Server = http://mirrors.xmission.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

Save and close the file, then update all the package indexes with the following command:

pacman -Syu

Step 2 – Install Htop on Arch Linux

By default, the Htop package is included in the Arch Linux default repository. You can see the detailed information on Htop using the following command:

pacman -Si htop

You should see the following output:

Repository      : extra
Name            : htop
Version         : 3.2.1-1
Description     : Interactive process viewer
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://htop.dev/
Licenses        : GPL
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : libcap  libcap.so=2-64  libnl  ncurses  libncursesw.so=6-64
Optional Deps   : lm_sensors: show cpu temperatures
                  lsof: show files opened by a process
                  strace: attach to a running process
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 144.56 KiB
Installed Size  : 362.45 KiB
Packager        : Christian Hesse <[email protected]>
Build Date      : Fri 03 Jun 2022 06:35:51 AM UTC
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

Next, install Htop using the following command:

pacman -Sy htop

Step 3 – How to Use Htop To Monitor Linux System

To use the Htop tool, open your command-line interface and run the Htop command:

htop

You should see all processes and system resources on the following screen:

Htop provides some common keyboard shortcuts that allow you to manage Htop.

To see the help information for Htop, press the F1 key. You should see the following screen:

To see the setup information, press the F2 key. You should see the following screen:

To search htop for user names and process names, press the F3 key. You should see the following screen:

To see the process tree instead of a single line per process, press the F5. You should see the following screen:

To see the individual process and sort it, press the F6. You should see the following screen:

To see a list of signals that can be sent to the process, press the F9 key. You should see the following screen:

Conclusion

In this post, we explained how to install Htop on Arch Linux. We also explained how to use it to monitor the system resources. You can now install Htop on dedicated hosts from Atlantic.Net! and monitor server processes.