How To Install atop on Ubuntu 21.04

One-liner install command

For those in a hurry, here's a one-line installation command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install atop

But if you are interested in the detailed steps with descriptions, the following information is for you.

What is atop and what are the ways to install it?

Before beginning this tutorial, you will need access to a server or computer running Ubuntu 21.04. This guide was written specifically with a server running Ubuntu 21.04 in mind, although it should also work on older, supported versions of the operating system.

Also, make sure you are running a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server. When you have an account available, log in as your non-root user to begin.

There are several ways to install atop on Ubuntu 21.04. You can use (links are clickable):

In the following sections, we will describe each method in detail. You can choose one of them or refer to the recommended one.

Install atop using apt-get

First, update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt-get database, You can install atop using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install atop

Install atop using apt

Because atop is available in Ubuntu 21.04’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from these repositories using the apt packaging system.

To begin, update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, You can install atop using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install atop

Install atop using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu 21.04. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating aptitude database, You can install atop by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install atop

How to upgrade (update) a single package atop using apt-get?

First, you will need to update packages index. Run update command as usual:

sudo apt-get update

Next, to upgrade only the atop, e.g. single package, you should use the following format with the apt-get command/apt command:

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install atop

Note that this command will not install any new packages! If you wish to install the package if it doesn't exist you may leave out --only-upgrade part.

sudo apt-get install atop

How To Uninstall atop from Ubuntu 21.04

To uninstall only the atop package you can execute the following command:

sudo apt-get remove atop

Uninstall atop and all its dependencies

To uninstall atop and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 21.04, you can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove atop

Remove atop with all configurations and data

To remove atop configuration and data from your system you can run the following purge command:

sudo apt-get -y purge atop

Remove atop completely (configurations, data and all of its dependencies)

And lastly, you can run the next command to remove absolutely everything related to atop package, e.g.: configurations, data and all of its dependencies. Just use this command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge atop

Extra info and code examples

Atop is an ASCII full-screen performance monitor, similar to the top command, but atop only shows the active system-resources and processes, and only shows the deviations since the previous interval. At regular intervals, it shows system-level activity related to the CPU, memory, swap, disks and network layers, and it shows for every active process the CPU utilization in system and user mode, the virtual and resident memory growth, priority, username, state, and exit code. The process level activity is also shown for processes which finished during the last interval, to get a complete overview about the consumers of things such as CPU time. Author: Gerlof Langeveld <

Conclusion

You now have a full guide on how to install atop using apt, apt-get and aptitude tools. Also, we showed how to update as a single package and different ways to uninstall the atop from Ubuntu 21.04.

See also: