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It quickly jumps down to 0%, but I am curious as to why it claims 20.1% steal literally every time I enter top. Try it yourself... top, q, top, q, top, q... it never fails.

Is it actually 20.1% steal or is this a bug with the top command?

This is happening on my t2.small instance running ubuntu.

darkAsPitch
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  • You dont need to run multiple times the top command, you can do: top, press "s", write "0.5", enter. It is going to refresh every 0.5 seconds – Fernando Garcia May 22 '15 at 16:35

1 Answers1

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In EC2, you don't get exclusive access to the CPU core, instead its shared between several instances. Steal time measures the amount of time that your instance is waiting for CPU time.

In either case, there is a bit of processing needed when when you start top. With a small instance, that may be enough to force you to wait for CPU to be available to you.

datasage
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