Hi,
For my controlled assessment in GCSE Computing one of the questions is:

How could a computer technician use the "top" command with "ps" and "kill" to investigate how a system is misbehaving?

I have to evaluate the usefulness of "top", and the question advises you do do primary research and ask IT professionals their opinions about this question, in order to use the information to evaluate in my essay.

If any one could advise me with this I would be very grateful,
Thanks

Here ya go:

https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=top%20ps%20kill

oi vey?

I think you should follow direction and evaluate the usefulness of top and ps and kill, then ask questions of professionals.
Hate to be blunt, but you did ask.

And: This seems worded like an assignment or homework?

I am heartened, GCSE GNU/Linux on the (GB) national curriculum it has indeed been a long time coming.

As to your 'homework' you might want to look at reports as opposed to acting upon those reports.

ps, regarding the 'attach site' posted by 'biosboy4' someone needs to remove the link.

Fred.

nmon is probably more useful. But top can show things like cpu usage (per running process and total). As well as ram and other usage stats. Not that useful if you don't look at it (over time) to see what's changing. But nice to have running and visible if your system becomes unresponsive. Not really anything that you couldn't derive by using man or pressing F1 while running stuff.

$ man top
$ man ps
$ man kill

8430 reasons to use a search engine.

"kill" is not an investigation tool. It is a "how can I change what is going on" tool. Killing processes changes things.

Did I do something wrong? I will delete it if needed. I definitely don't want to break any rules or anything. Let me know, thanks!

Was "misbehaving" actually the word they used?

There's nothing wrong with that link. Someone is either confused about what that "Let Me Duck Duck Go That For You" site does, or is somehow unaware that duckduckgo.com is a popular search engine.

Thanks all :)

PS.
It's a worded coursework assignment, we have to get evidence and information to use when writing it.

Okay, let me briefly try to "turn this thread into a more-profitable direction," without "giving away The Answer."

A computer technician, upon being presented by The Almighty Customer™ with an Unknown Problem™ that consists (merely, and vaguely ...) of: "it's too slow," is probably going to first want to know:

The obvious advantage of top is that you can sort the resulting display in various ways.

But then, having identified a particular PID = Process-ID as a possible culprit, you might need to know more about it than top alone might display.

Then, finally, you might wish to try to remediate the problem by "killing" something.

The basic purpose of any such question is to gauge your ability to "think on your feet." If you are presented with a raging fire, what do you intend to do? Do you, first of all, recognize that you must determine why the fire is raging? Do you have at-least an intuitive grasp of "probable causes," and of how to go about investigating them? And then, do you know what you might choose to do next?

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Thanks for all the help