System Monitoring from the Terminal
Diagnose a slow, noisy, or misbehaving machine using nothing but command-line tools — CPU, memory, disk, network, and logs.
Prerequisites: completed Process Management and Job Control.
Version note: verified against current docs as of July 2026. journalctl/systemctl are the current standard on systemd-based distros (the large majority today); dmesg and /var/log remain relevant fallbacks on non-systemd systems and for kernel-ring-buffer messages that predate journald startup. iostat, mpstat, and sar ship in the sysstat package on essentially every distro.
Not every machine you'll ever touch has Grafana installed. This project builds the skill of diagnosing performance and reliability problems using only what's available on any stock Linux box: process tools you already know, plus the CPU/memory/disk/network utilities and log tools that turn "the server feels slow" into a specific, actionable answer.
CPU and memory pressure
Disk space and disk I/O are different problems
Network activity and open connections
Read the logs that already explain what happened, then put it all together
Secret Mission: Reconstruct an incident from logs alone
Before You Go
Test what you just learned
Self-testing is one of the best ways to retain new skills. Unlock project quizzes to check your understanding.
Log in to unlock0 / 7 complete
