How to find the process overloading the server

Summary

Server is slow or unresponsive due to high load: use top, htop, iotop, and ps to find the problematic process.

Applies to:
✔ VPS
✔ Dedicated servers
✔ Linux

Quick load assessment

uptime

Load average above the CPU count means overload. Check CPU count:

nproc

Find process by CPU

top -bn1 -o %CPU | head -20

Interactive: top, press P for CPU sort, M for memory sort.

Find process by memory

ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -15

Using htop

apt install htop -y

htop

Disk I/O diagnostics

apt install iotop -y

iotop -o

Alternative:

pidstat -d 1 5

Terminating a problematic process

Graceful:

kill PID

Forced:

kill -9 PID

Before terminating a process, make sure it's not a critical system service. Killing mysql, nginx, or sshd will make the corresponding services unavailable.

Verification

uptime

If the load returns after terminating the process, the root cause must be found (cron jobs, malware, memory leaks). Open a support ticket if you cannot identify the source.