How to save htop output to file?

Question

I'm trying to write a query that will calculate remaining total points for each day when some points have been completed.

Story points completed in a day

So if my total is 100 points, it should show 99, 97.5, 94.5 as I want to use it in a burndown graph in Power BI.

If I use LAG, it will calculate the remaining for each row separately, instead of using 'updated' total from previous row.

Also - for rest of the days with no change in points it should show most recent remaining total.

Any ideas?

Solution 1

Ron provided a link to htop output to human readable file and a quote from the top-voted answer by the developer of htop.

However, a little further down on the same page, there's a solution which uses ANSI to HTML conversion. Briefly, install aha from the software center and then run:

echo q | htop | aha --black --line-fix > htop.html

Here's what the first few lines look like:

  1  [|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||                                    42.9%]     Tasks: 73, 251 thr; 1 running
  2  [||||||                                                                7.1%]     Load average: 0.28 0.32 0.32 
  Mem[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||                              581/3916MB]     Uptime: 03:09:25
  Swp[                                                                  0/4056MB]
  PID USER      PRI  NI  VIRT   RES   SHR S CPU% MEM%   TIME+  Command          
 9785 dkb        20   0 31544  2464  1312 R 22.2  0.1  0:00.09 htop             
 3503 dkb        20   0 1065M 59684 16344 S  7.4  1.5  6:25.43 mpv --profile=pseudo-gui -- file:///home/dkb/Downloads/ONX
    1 root       20   0 33760  3088  1488 S  0.0  0.1  0:01.62 /sbin/init        
  276 root       20   0 19472   652   460 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.19 upstart-udev-bridge --daemon
  281 root       20   0 52592  2640  1016 S  0.0  0.1  0:00.76 /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd --daemon
  577 root       20   0 15256   632   388 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.05 upstart-socket-bridge --daemon
  662 root       20   0 15272   416   200 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.04 upstart-file-bridge --daemon
  677 syslog     20   0  249M  1304   836 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.01 rsyslogd          
  678 syslog     20   0  249M  1304   836 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 rsyslogd          
  679 syslog     20   0  249M  1304   836 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.02 rsyslogd          
  675 syslog     20   0  249M  1304   836 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.04 rsyslogd          
  680 messagebu  20   0 39860  1968  1044 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.52 dbus-daemon --system --fork

Solution 2

Right from the author of htop:

No, there's no "nice" way to get the output of htop piped into a file. It is an interactive application and uses terminal redraw routines to produce its interface (therefore, piping it makes as much sense as, for example, piping vim into a text file -- you'll get similar results).

To get the information about your processes in a text format, use ps. For example, ps auxf > file.txt gives you lots of easy to parse information (or ps aux if you do not wish tree-formatting -- see man ps for more options).

Solution 3

Try this command; it does what you want. You just need to install aha and html2text first.

echo q | htop -C | aha --line-fix | html2text -width 999 | grep -v "F1Help" | grep -v "xml version=" > file.txt

Solution 4

this can get colorful output same as you see when htop running.

1. save terminal output to file

echo | htop  > /tmp/htop.out

## OR

sleep 3 | htop  > /tmp/htop.out

//htop.out has terminal save/load console_sequence

2. show output in terminal

head -c -10 /tmp/htop.out  | tail -c +10

// just use head & tail strip the screen reset console_sequence
// 10 bytes was roughly

// only show last screen in htop.out

X. explanation

vim /tmp/htop.out,

will see something like this ( @ ubuntu18, gnome-terminal, TERM=xterm )

^[[?1049h^[[22; .... ^[[?1049l^[[23;0;0t^M^[[?1l^[>

• ^[[?1049h: switch to alternative screen @ begin of htop
• ^[[?1049l: switch to normal screen @ end of htop

htop.out is not blank, it just show content in alternative screen, no effecit with normal screen.

the head tail strip out those special sequence, let it show content at normal screen.

@brad

// seems the watch command also use this mechanism

--- refs: ---
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#h2-The-Alternate-Screen-Buffer
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/288962/what-does-1049h-and-1h-ansi-escape-sequences-do
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11023929/using-the-alternate-screen-in-a-bash-script

Solution 5

I normally do the following:

top
control-c

and then scroll up so I can copy/paste:

rinzwind@schijfwereld:~$ top
top - 18:58:05 up 13 min,  2 users,  load average: 0,18, 0,35, 0,24
Tasks: 252 total,   1 running, 251 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3,4 us,  0,7 sy,  0,5 ni, 95,3 id,  0,1 wa,  0,0 hi,  0,0 si,  0,0 st
KiB Mem:  12190608 total,  2007692 used, 10182916 free,    50292 buffers
KiB Swap: 24414204 total,        0 used, 24414204 free.   739236 cached Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND     
 1093 rinzwind  20   0  364616   8824   7252 S   6,2  0,1   0:00.94 ibus-daemon 
 2525 rinzwind  20   0   29192   3048   2540 R   6,2  0,0   0:00.02 top         
    1 root      20   0  185008   5564   3840 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.77 systemd     
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 kthreadd    
    3 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 
    5 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 kworker/0:+ 
    7 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.32 rcu_sched   
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 rcu_bh      
    9 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.09 rcuos/0     
   10 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 rcuob/0     
   11 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 migration/0 
   12 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 watchdog/0  
   13 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 watchdog/1  
   14 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 migration/1 
   15 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1 
   16 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.04 kworker/1:0 
   17 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S   0,0  0,0   0:00.00 kworker/1:+ 
rinzwind@schijfwereld:~$ 

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Comments

[Zeph]

What have you tried? See codingsight.com/…

[BallpointBen]

For those wondering: piping q to htop quits it immediately.

[brad]

can you explain this in a little more detail? "just use head & tail strip the screen reset console_sequence"

[yurenchen]

@brad strip out some special char sequence, ( such as echo -ne "\e[10;50H \e[1J", will move cursor and erase display, ( more detail found at man console_sequence

[asgs]

Hahahahahahahah

[Tik0]

I like to add stty to expand the rows such that every process is in the html file: stty rows 9999; echo q | htop | aha --black --line-fix > htop.html