NVTOP

What is NVTOP?

Nvtop stands for NVidia TOP, a (h)top like task monitor for NVIDIA GPUs. It can handle multiple GPUs and print information about them in a htop familiar way.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words:

Table of Contents

1. NVTOP Options and Interactive Commands
2. GPU Support
3. Build
   1. Ubuntu / Debian
   2. Fedora / RedHat / CentOS
   3. OpenSUSE
   4. Arch Linux
   5. NVTOP Build
4. Troubleshoot
5. License

NVTOP Options and Interactive Commands

NVTOP comes with a manpage!

man nvtop

For quick command line arguments help

nvtop -h
nvtop --help

GPU Support

The NVML library does not support some of the queries for GPUs coming before the Kepler microarchitecture. Anything starting at GeForce 600, GeForce 800M and successor should work fine. For more information about supported GPUs please take a look at the NVML documentation.

Build

Two libraries are required:

• The NVIDIA Management Library (NVML) which comes with the GPU driver.
  • This queries the GPU for information.
• The ncurses library driving the user interface.
  • This makes the screen look beautiful.

Distribution Specific Installation Process

Ubuntu / Debian

• NVIDIA drivers (see Ubuntu Wiki or Ubuntu PPA or Debian Wiki)
• CMake, ncurses and git

  sudo apt install cmake libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev git

• NVTOP
  • Follow the NVTOP Build

Fedora / RedHat / CentOS

• NVIDIA drivers, CUDA required for nvml libraries (see RPM Fusion)
• CMake, ncurses and git

  sudo dnf install cmake ncurses-devel git

• NVTOP
  • Follow the NVTOP Build

OpenSUSE

• NVIDIA drivers (see SUSE Support Database)
• CMake, ncurses and git

  sudo zypper install cmake ncurses-devel git

• NVTOP
  • Follow the NVTOP Build

Arch Linux

• NVIDIA drivers (see Arch Linux wiki)
• CMake, ncurses and git

  sudo pacman -S cmake ncurses git

• NVTOP
  • The nvtop AUR package
  • Follow the NVTOP Build

NVTOP Build

git clone https://github.com/Syllo/nvtop.git
mkdir -p nvtop/build && cd nvtop/build
cmake ..

# If it errors with "Could NOT find NVML (missing: NVML_INCLUDE_DIRS)"
# try the following command instead, otherwise skip to the build with make.
cmake .. -DNVML_RETRIEVE_HEADER_ONLINE=True

make
make install # You may need sufficient permission for that (root)

The build system supports multiple build type (e.g. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo):

• Release: Binary without debug information
• RelWithDebInfo: Binary with debug information
• Debug: Compile with warning flags and address/undefined sanitizers enabled (for development purposes)

Troubleshoot

• The plot looks bad:
  • Verify that you installed the wide character version of the NCurses library (libncursesw5-dev for Debian / Ubuntu), clean the build directory and restart the build process.
• Putty: Tell putty not to lie about its capabilities ($TERM) by setting the field Terminal-type string to putty in the menu Connection > Data > Terminal Details.

License

Nvtop is licensed under the GPLV3 license or any later version. You will find a copy of the license inside the COPYING file of the repository or at the gnu website <www.gnu.org/licenses/>.