watch-later/cpu-stat

A command line program to get CPU usage statistics on Linux systems.

cpu-stat

A command line program to get CPU usage statistics on Linux systems.

I created cpu-stat to have a quick and simple answer to the question "what's the CPU usage of my system right now?" and that's what you get when you run the program with no options.

The intended use is for scripts or system monitoring tools which do not want to parse /proc/stat directly to get CPU usage stats.

For people interested in understanding more about how things work under the hood, I wrote a tutorial describing a much simpler version of this program and providing more information on the different CPU states.

NOTE: cpu-stat requires Linux kernel 2.6.33 or newer.

Installation

To build cpu-stat you will need SCons.

simple build

This will build cpu-stat in debug mode. Executable file will be in bin/debug.

scons

build in release mode

This will build cpu-stat in release mode. Executable file will be in bin/release.

scons mode=release

install release build

This will install cpu-stat in /usr/bin/.

sudo scons mode=release install

clean release build

This will remove all files generated by a release build.

sudo scons mode=release -c install

You can omit install at the end to remove only build files and keep the installed executable.

Usage

Print options

flag	description	default
-a | --all	print active time percentage for all CPUs, starting with total	false
-c <cpu>	print stats only for selected CPU.	-
-f | --full-state	print time percentage of all states	false
-p <precision>	set the decimal precision of printed numbers	2
-s <state>	print time percentage for specific state [0-9]	-
-v | --verbose	enable verbose mode	false

Other options

flag	description	default
-d <time>	set delay time (in ms) between 2 snapshots of CPU data	100
-h | --help	print help	-
--version	print the version number	-

Examples

Print percentage of active time for total CPU:

$ cpu-stat
2.50

Print percentage of active time for all CPUs in verbose mode (with labels):

$ cpu-stat -a -v
tot] 5.00%
  0] 0.00%
  1] 0.00%
  2] 20.00%
  3] 0.00%

Print percentage of idle time (state 3) for CPU 2 using 4 digits as decimal precision:

$ cpu-stat -s 3 -c 2 -p 4
100.0000

Print percentage of all states for all CPUs in verbose mode (with labels):

$ cpu-stat -a -v -f
tot] usr:   0.00% | sys:   0.00% | nic:   0.00% | idl: 100.00% | iow:   0.00% | hir:   0.00% | sir:   0.00% | ste:   0.00% | gue:   0.00% | gun:   0.00% | 
  0] usr:   0.00% | sys:   0.00% | nic:   0.00% | idl: 100.00% | iow:   0.00% | hir:   0.00% | sir:   0.00% | ste:   0.00% | gue:   0.00% | gun:   0.00% | 
  1] usr:   0.00% | sys:   0.00% | nic:   0.00% | idl: 100.00% | iow:   0.00% | hir:   0.00% | sir:   0.00% | ste:   0.00% | gue:   0.00% | gun:   0.00% | 
  2] usr:   0.00% | sys:   0.00% | nic:   0.00% | idl: 100.00% | iow:   0.00% | hir:   0.00% | sir:   0.00% | ste:   0.00% | gue:   0.00% | gun:   0.00% | 
  3] usr:   0.00% | sys:   0.00% | nic:   0.00% | idl:  90.91% | iow:   9.09% | hir:   0.00% | sir:   0.00% | ste:   0.00% | gue:   0.00% | gun:   0.00% |

Contribute

If you want to contribute to cpu-stat check out this guide about how to contribute to an open source project on GitHub first.