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Asked: 2026-06-07T22:41:51+00:00

I started up 15 Python threads, but the top command says there is only

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I started up 15 Python threads, but the top command says there is only 1 running:

top -p 4176, then type H

top - 23:46:56 up 46 days,  5:43,  1 user,  load average: 1.16, 1.07, 1.01
Tasks:  16 total,   **1 running**,  15 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 29.8%us,  0.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 68.4%id,  0.9%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   8085788k total,  7944132k used,   141656k free,   140756k buffers
Swap:  7811068k total,        0k used,  7811068k free,  6902536k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
29771 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S 16.6  1.9  27:46.68 python
29760 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S 16.3  1.9  27:45.82 python
29768 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  9.0  1.9  28:15.11 python
29767 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  8.7  1.9  27:47.97 python
29770 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 R  8.0  1.9  28:05.83 python
29758 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  7.7  1.9  28:02.30 python
29761 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  7.0  1.9  27:40.68 python
29759 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  6.7  1.9  28:21.71 python
29763 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  5.7  1.9  28:11.03 python
29769 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  5.7  1.9  27:59.36 python
29757 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  4.3  1.9  28:01.46 python
29762 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  4.0  1.9  28:03.70 python
29765 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  4.0  1.9  27:37.34 python
29766 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  1.0  1.9  28:05.28 python
29764 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  0.3  1.9  27:44.07 python
 4761 scraping  20   0  341m 148m 3460 S  0.0  1.9   0:00.61 python

I want to know why there is only 1 running task rather than 15/16?

Thanks a lot.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In CPython threads on *nix are implemented using pthread, and they show up like they were separate processes when using top/htop etc, even if they’re not (there’s a big difference between running 15 python processes and running 15 python threads and top output might be misleading here).

    There is only one running due to GIL – in CPython there’s always only one instruction executing at a time in each interpreter.

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