How to Easily Check I/O Usage by Process in Linux

Applies to: 

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Version N/A and later

Linux x86-64

 

Goal

Linux systems do not generally log past I/O activity per process. It is however quite simple to check for I/O activity per process while the processes are still running in the system. The purpose of this document is to provide the steps to accomplish this both in Oracle Linux or Ubuntu instances in OCI, but it will also apply to any Linux distribution where iotop can be installed.

 

Solution

The iotop utility can be used to check disk I/O usage in real time on any Linux system where iotop can be installed.