Htop does not show a process

By default, htop lists each thread of a process separately, while ps doesn't. To turn off the display of threads, press H, or use the "Setup / Display options" menu, "Hide userland threads". This puts the following line in your ~/.htoprc or ~/.config/htop/htoprc (you can alternatively put it there manually):

hide_userland_threads=1

(Also hide_kernel_threads=1, toggled by pressing K, but it's 1 by default.)

Another useful option is “Display threads in a different color” in the same menu (highlight_threads=1 in .htoprc), which causes threads to be shown in a different color (green in the default theme).

In the first line of the htop display, there's a line like “Tasks: 377, 842 thr, 161 kthr; 2 running”. This shows the total number of processes, userland threads, kernel threads, and threads in a runnable state. The numbers don't change when you filter the display, but the indications “thr” and “kthr” disappear when you turn off the inclusion of user/kernel threads respectively.

When you see multiple processes that have all characteristics in common except the PID and CPU-related fields (NIce value, CPU%, TIME+, ...), it's highly likely that they're threads in the same process.

htop is unaware it is running on a kernel level virtualized environment (Dreamhost VPS is using VServer technology). It is then showing the CPU usage for all the OS instances sharing the same kernel, not just yours.

Have a look to vtop output which sho ws all processes sharing the CPUs, not just the ones in your container.

If vtop is not installed, and this is probably expected for a commercial solution as one wouldn't like to a customer to see what processes are running other customers, there is no way to fix the issue from inside your container, unless patching top source to compute CPU usage instead of getting it from the kernel statistics.

It might do it by summing up CPU usage of all the processes running in your VServer, e.g.:

ps aux | awk '
    {cpu+=$3; ram+=$6} 
    END {printf("cpu: %d%%, RAM: %.2f MiB\n",cpu,ram/1024) }'