A handy little Linux application called mytop fits this just
perfectly.  This is a near-time monitor just like the UNIX utility
‘top’ that specifically looks at what the MySQL server is doing. 
It updates every few seconds, so you can get a reasonable look at your
SQL performance.  It’s capable of displaying a huge amount of
information, so be sure to read the documentation.  It also
assumes that you’re connecting to the MySQL server on localhost with
the root user and no password.  These can be changed either in the
script itself or on the command line.

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/mysql/mytop/