ktop

A terminal-based system resource monitor built for tracking resource usage when running hybrid LLM workloads.

About this fork

This is a fork of brontoguana/ktop. Everything from upstream is here; on top of it:

• Significant performance improvements — the upstream application uses roughly 6% of a single core while idle; this fork uses roughly 0.8% at the same refresh rate, by sampling only what changes: one /proc read per panel, cached sysfs/hwmon paths, fdinfo/NVML query caching, and a poll-based event loop
• Intel GPU support — detection and full per-GPU panels for Intel Arc cards (xe/i915): utilization, VRAM, temperature, and power, no root required
• Revamped Network and Memory panels — more detail (per-direction peak speeds, PSI memory pressure, committed vs commit-limit, swap I/O) with the three mid-row panel heights balanced so the layout sits evenly
• Grid activation core animation — a per-core braille heat grid that automatically sizes itself up to 32 cores; with more cores than that it pairs them up for the UI, supporting up to 64 cores in the graphic
• Disks panel — live per-device read/write throughput (great for projects like XeStrata doing their thing with disk reads)
• Performance stats page (s) — per-block and per-GPU timing of the sampling loop, which is how we found that the NVIDIA software stack is on average far slower to answer info queries than the other vendors' — and made it 4× cheaper
• Process lists as the vertical height adjuster — the Top Processes panels absorb or shrink for all vertical slack first, so GPU, CPU/memory/network, temperature, and disk panels keep their exact sizes at any terminal height

Features

Latest

• Intel Arc GPU support — Alchemist/Battlemage Arc cards via xe/i915 (Arc Pro B70, Arc A770/A750/A380/A310, Arc B580): utilization, VRAM, temperature, and power — no root required
• Per-GPU power & PCIe rows — live watts scaled to each card's driver power limit with history sparkline, live PCIe link speed/width vs max, and PCIe transfer speed (NVIDIA)
• Disks panel — live per-device Read/Write throughput for physical disks, NVMe first
• Per-core CPU grid — braille per-core usage heat-grid with core-count, total %, frequency, and package-power readouts
• Deeper memory panel — PSI memory pressure, committed vs commit-limit, and swap I/O throughput
• Status-bar version stamp — bottom right always shows the running version; a background release check pops | Update available into it when the fork has a newer release (disable with --no-update-check or KTOP_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1)
• One-line install and upgrade: curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SleepinDevil/ktop/master/install.sh | bash
• No runtime dependencies — no Python, no pip, no venv

Core

• GPU Monitoring — Per-GPU utilization and memory usage with color-coded sparkline history (NVIDIA + AMD + Intel Arc)
• GPU Power & PCIe — Per-GPU live power in watts scaled to the card's driver power limit with bar and history sparkline (NVIDIA NVML + AMD hwmon + Intel hwmon), live PCIe link speed/width vs device max, and real-time PCIe transfer speed (NVIDIA via NVML; Intel/AMD expose no link byte counters)
• Network Monitoring — Upload/download speeds with separate colored sparklines (upload extends up, download extends down) and per-direction peak speeds
• CPU Monitoring — Overall CPU usage with gradient bar chart and sparkline history, plus a per-core braille usage grid with core-count, total %, frequency, and CPU package power readouts
• Memory Monitoring — RAM and swap usage with gradient progress bars, memory pressure (PSI), committed vs commit-limit, and swap I/O throughput
• Disk Monitoring — Live per-device Read/Write throughput from /sys/block stats (physical disks only, NVMe drives sorted first)
• Temperature Strip — CPU, memory, and per-GPU temps with mini bar charts and hardware-accurate thresholds
• OOM Kill Tracker — Status bar shows the most recent OOM kill from the last 8 hours (kernel OOM and systemd-oomd)
• Process Tables — Top 20 processes by memory (Used/Shared) and CPU usage (Core % + system-wide CPU %)
• 50 Color Themes — Press t to browse and switch themes with live preview; persists across sessions
• Color Mode Toggle — Press c to switch between truecolor and safe Basic color output; persists across sessions
• Gradient Bar Charts — Smooth per-block color gradients from low to high across all bars
• Responsive UI — 50ms input polling for snappy keyboard navigation

Install

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SleepinDevil/ktop/master/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest binary and installs it to /usr/local/bin (will prompt for sudo if needed). Run the same command again to upgrade.

Installed versions can also update themselves:

ktop update

To remove only the installed ktop executable and leave user config untouched:

ktop uninstall

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/SleepinDevil/ktop.git
cd ktop/ktop-rs
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/ktop /usr/local/bin/

Usage

# Run with defaults (1s refresh)
ktop

# Custom refresh rate
ktop -r 2

# Start with a specific theme
ktop --theme "Tokyo Night"

# Simulation mode (fake OOM kills in the status bar)
ktop --sim

# Draw in the current screen instead of the alternate screen
ktop --no-alt-screen

# Disable synchronized (atomic) terminal redraws
ktop --no-sync

# Skip the background GitHub update check at startup
ktop --no-update-check

# Remote terminal fallback if the display flashes
ktop --compat

# Report terminal size and resize behavior
ktop diagnose-terminal

# Isolate which terminal repaint behavior flashes
ktop diagnose-render --case full-paint

# Show version
ktop --version

# Update or remove ktop
ktop update
ktop uninstall

Environment variables (all accept 1/true/yes/on): KTOP_COMPAT, KTOP_NO_ALT_SCREEN, KTOP_NO_SYNC, KTOP_NO_UPDATE_CHECK — equivalents of --compat, --no-alt-screen, --no-sync, and --no-update-check.

Keybindings

Key	Action
q / ESC	Quit
t	Open theme picker
s	Performance stats page: per-block timing of the refresh loop and ktop's own CPU time; s/Esc closes
c	Toggle color mode between truecolor and safe Basic color output
Arrow keys	Navigate theme picker
Enter	Select theme

Remote Terminal Compatibility

If a web or remote-support terminal flashes while repainting, try:

ktop --compat

Compatibility mode disables alternate screen and synchronized redraws, slows the default refresh to 2s, and uses lower-churn rendering by suppressing moving sparklines and refreshing process tables less often. It also uses coarse progress bars instead of per-cell gradients, avoids dark-gray ANSI styling and shaded filler glyphs, and clears the current screen on entry/exit so stale styled cells do not remain behind the shell prompt.

You can also set KTOP_COMPAT=1.

If a terminal flashes on extended color output, press c in the main view to switch Color from Truecolor to Basic. Basic mode avoids RGB and indexed foreground color escapes and is saved in ~/.config/ktop/config.json.

To check whether a terminal is reporting unstable sizes or repeated resize events:

ktop diagnose-terminal --duration 8

If the size report is stable but ktop still flashes, isolate the repaint trigger:

ktop diagnose-render --case plain --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case cursor --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case color --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case rgb --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case unicode --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case full-paint --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case clear --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case alternate --duration 4
ktop diagnose-render --case sync --duration 4

Report which cases visibly flash. Each case exits by itself.

If a command unexpectedly starts the monitor, check ktop --version; terminal diagnostics and compatibility mode require ktop 1.0.10 or newer.

Requirements

• Linux (reads /proc and sysfs directly)
• NVIDIA GPU + drivers (optional — for NVIDIA monitoring)
• AMD GPU + amdgpu driver (optional — for AMD monitoring)
• Intel Arc (Alchemist/Battlemage via xe/i915): temperature, power, VRAM, and utilization. VRAM used/total comes from Level Zero sysman (libze_loader.so.1, loaded at runtime when installed — e.g. the Intel compute stack / XeStrata) and falls back to DRM fdinfo (/proc/<pid>/fdinfo, your own GPU processes) and mem_info_vram_used (i915); the total falls back to the PCI BAR2 aperture. Utilization uses the xe PMU (whole card, requires perf_event_paranoid <= 0) and falls back to DRM fdinfo engine cycles (your processes, no root needed); shows n/a when neither is available.
• No runtime dependencies — single static binary

License

MIT