Time+—CPU time
Command—The command being runSeveral of these fields are unimportant unless you have a specific problem.
The important ones in this case are PID, User, Niceness, %CPU, %MEM,
Time+, and Command. The Niceness of a process is how much time the
CPU allocates to it compared to everything else on the system; 19 is the
lowest, and -19 is the highest.
With the columns explained, you should be able to find the PID of the errant
yes command launched earlier; it is usually the first number below PID.
Now type k, enter that PID, and press Enter. You are prompted for a signal
number (the manner in which you want the process killed), with 15 provided
as the default. Signal 15 (also known as SIGTERM, for terminate) is a polite
way of asking a process to shut down, and all processes that are not wildly out
of control should respond to it. Give top a few seconds to update itself, and
hopefully the yes command should be gone. If not, you need to be more
forceful: Type k again, enter the PID, and press Enter. When prompted for a
signal to send, enter 9 and press Enter to send SIGKILL, or “terminate
whether you like it or not.”
You can choose the fields to display by pressing f. A new screen appears,
listing all possible fields, along with the letter you need to press to toggle their
visibility. Selected fields are marked with an asterisk and have their letter, as
follows:
Click here to view code image
- A: PID = Process Id
If you now press the a key, the screen changes to this:
Click here to view code image
a: PID = Process Id
When you have made your selections, press Enter to return to the normal top
view with your normal column selection.
You can also press F to select the field you want to use for sorting. This
works the same way as the field selection screen, except that you can select
only one field at a time. Again, press Enter to get back to top after you have
made your selection, and it is updated with the new sorting.
If you press B, text bolding is enabled. By default, this bolds some of the
header bar as well as any programs that are currently running (as opposed to