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wtf is atop?

keyan/atop — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-17 · repo last pushed 2019-04-12

★ 1RubyAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 2/5DormantSetup · easy

TL;DR

A Chef cookbook that automatically installs and configures atop, a background tool that records server CPU, memory, and disk activity over time.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Installs atop via Chef
      Runs as background service
      Manages log rotation
    Tech stack
      Ruby
      Chef
      atop
    Use cases
      Monitor server performance
      Debug past slowdowns
      Deploy monitoring at scale
    Audience
      Ops and DevOps teams
      Infrastructure engineers

Code map

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Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Deploy atop monitoring consistently across Amazon Linux, CentOS, or Debian servers with Chef.

REASON 2

Investigate why a server was slow at a specific point in the past using recorded snapshots.

REASON 3

Customize how often performance data is collected and where logs are stored.

REASON 4

Roll out background CPU, memory, and disk monitoring across a whole infrastructure.

What's in the stack?

RubyChef

How it stacks up

keyan/atopamitsuryavanshi/graphiti-activegraphcrazywoola/homebrew-dify
Stars111
LanguageRubyRubyRuby
Last pushed2019-04-122022-12-092025-04-25
MaintenanceDormantDormantStale
Setup difficultyeasyhardeasy
Complexity2/53/51/5
Audienceops devopsdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 30min

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Help me add this Chef cookbook to my infrastructure to install atop on all my servers.
Prompt 2
Show me how to change how often atop collects data using this cookbook's settings.
Prompt 3
Explain how this cookbook prevents atop's log files from filling up disk space.
Prompt 4
Walk me through customizing which atop version this cookbook installs.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is atop?

A Chef cookbook that automatically installs and configures atop, a background tool that records server CPU, memory, and disk activity over time.

What language is atop written in?

Mainly Ruby. The stack also includes Ruby, Chef.

Is atop actively maintained?

Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2019-04-12).

How hard is atop to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is atop for?

Mainly ops devops.

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