Accurate calculation of CPU usage given in percentage in Linux?

Question

It\'s a question which has been asked many times, however there is no well supported answer I could find.

Many people suggest the use of top command, but if you run

Answer 1

The following is a bash script which is based on Vangelis's answer. It produces output like this:

total 49.1803
cpu0 14.2857
cpu1 100
cpu2 28.5714
cpu3 100
cpu4 30
cpu5 25

Create a file called get_cpu_usage.sh

Run it using the following command: bash get_cpu_usage.sh 0.2

The argument is the number of seconds to measure. In this case it's 200 milliseconds.

The contents are:

#!/bin/sh

sleepDurationSeconds=$1

previousDate=$(date +%s%N | cut -b1-13)
previousStats=$(cat /proc/stat)

sleep $sleepDurationSeconds

currentDate=$(date +%s%N | cut -b1-13)
currentStats=$(cat /proc/stat)    

cpus=$(echo "$currentStats" | grep -P 'cpu' | awk -F " " '{print $1}')

for cpu in $cpus
do
    currentLine=$(echo "$currentStats" | grep "$cpu ")
    user=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $2}')
    nice=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $3}')
    system=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $4}')
    idle=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $5}')
    iowait=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $6}')
    irq=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $7}')
    softirq=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $8}')
    steal=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $9}')
    guest=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $10}')
    guest_nice=$(echo "$currentLine" | awk -F " " '{print $11}')

    previousLine=$(echo "$previousStats" | grep "$cpu ")
    prevuser=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $2}')
    prevnice=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $3}')
    prevsystem=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $4}')
    previdle=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $5}')
    previowait=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $6}')
    previrq=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $7}')
    prevsoftirq=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $8}')
    prevsteal=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $9}')
    prevguest=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $10}')
    prevguest_nice=$(echo "$previousLine" | awk -F " " '{print $11}')    

    PrevIdle=$((previdle + previowait))
    Idle=$((idle + iowait))

    PrevNonIdle=$((prevuser + prevnice + prevsystem + previrq + prevsoftirq + prevsteal))
    NonIdle=$((user + nice + system + irq + softirq + steal))

    PrevTotal=$((PrevIdle + PrevNonIdle))
    Total=$((Idle + NonIdle))

    totald=$((Total - PrevTotal))
    idled=$((Idle - PrevIdle))

    CPU_Percentage=$(awk "BEGIN {print ($totald - $idled)/$totald*100}")

    if [[ "$cpu" == "cpu" ]]; then
        echo "total "$CPU_Percentage
    else
        echo $cpu" "$CPU_Percentage
    fi
done

Answer 2

I was also looking for the same. Here is my ruby program based on the Vangelis Tasoulas's answer:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
$VERBOSE = true

prev_file = IO.readlines(::File.join('', 'proc', 'stat')).select { |line| line.start_with?('cpu') }
Kernel.sleep(0.05)
file = IO.readlines(::File.join('', 'proc', 'stat')).select { |line| line.start_with?('cpu') }

file.size.times do |i|
    data, prev_data = file[i].split.map(&:to_f), prev_file[i].split.map(&:to_f)

    %w(user nice sys idle iowait irq softirq steal).each_with_index do |el, index|
        eval "@#{el}, @prev_#{el} = #{data[index + 1]}, #{prev_data[index + 1]}"
    end

    previdle, idle = @prev_idle + @prev_iowait, @idle + @iowait
    totald = idle + (@user + @nice + @sys + @irq + @softirq + @steal) -
        (previdle + (@prev_user + @prev_nice + @prev_sys + @prev_irq + @prev_softirq + @prev_steal))

    puts "CPU #{i}: #{((totald - (idle - previdle)) / totald * 100).round(2)} %"
end

Answer 3

According the htop source code, my assumptions looks like they are valid:

(see static inline double LinuxProcessList_scanCPUTime(LinuxProcessList* this) function at LinuxProcessList.c)

// Guest time is already accounted in usertime
usertime = usertime - guest;                             # As you see here, it subtracts guest from user time
nicetime = nicetime - guestnice;                         # and guest_nice from nice time
// Fields existing on kernels >= 2.6
// (and RHEL's patched kernel 2.4...)
unsigned long long int idlealltime = idletime + ioWait;  # ioWait is added in the idleTime
unsigned long long int systemalltime = systemtime + irq + softIrq;
unsigned long long int virtalltime = guest + guestnice;
unsigned long long int totaltime = usertime + nicetime + systemalltime + idlealltime + steal + virtalltime;

And so, from fields listed in the first line of /proc/stat: (see section 1.8 at documentation)

     user    nice   system  idle      iowait irq   softirq  steal  guest  guest_nice
cpu  74608   2520   24433   1117073   6176   4054  0        0      0      0

Algorithmically, we can calculate the CPU usage percentage like:

PrevIdle = previdle + previowait
Idle = idle + iowait

PrevNonIdle = prevuser + prevnice + prevsystem + previrq + prevsoftirq + prevsteal
NonIdle = user + nice + system + irq + softirq + steal

PrevTotal = PrevIdle + PrevNonIdle
Total = Idle + NonIdle

# differentiate: actual value minus the previous one
totald = Total - PrevTotal
idled = Idle - PrevIdle

CPU_Percentage = (totald - idled)/totald

Answer 4

Hey i was also researching for the topic and found this thread really helpful. I used Vangelis Tasoulas formula to write a small python script for this. Attached is my Python code for the issue. It loads the cpu usage per cpu_id every second. Maybe its helps others as well. Also comments/suggestions are welcome :-)

#!/usr/bin/python 
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

'''
Created on 04.12.2014

@author: plagtag
'''
from time import sleep
import sys

class GetCpuLoad(object):
    '''
    classdocs
    '''


    def __init__(self, percentage=True, sleeptime = 1):
        '''
        @parent class: GetCpuLoad
        @date: 04.12.2014
        @author: plagtag
        @info: 
        @param:
        @return: CPU load in percentage
        '''
        self.percentage = percentage
        self.cpustat = '/proc/stat'
        self.sep = ' ' 
        self.sleeptime = sleeptime

    def getcputime(self):
        '''
        http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23367857/accurate-calculation-of-cpu-usage-given-in-percentage-in-linux
        read in cpu information from file
        The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
            0cpuid: number of cpu
            1user: normal processes executing in user mode
            2nice: niced processes executing in user mode
            3system: processes executing in kernel mode
            4idle: twiddling thumbs
            5iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
            6irq: servicing interrupts
            7softirq: servicing softirqs

        #the formulas from htop 
             user    nice   system  idle      iowait irq   softirq  steal  guest  guest_nice
        cpu  74608   2520   24433   1117073   6176   4054  0        0      0      0


        Idle=idle+iowait
        NonIdle=user+nice+system+irq+softirq+steal
        Total=Idle+NonIdle # first line of file for all cpus

        CPU_Percentage=((Total-PrevTotal)-(Idle-PrevIdle))/(Total-PrevTotal)
        '''
        cpu_infos = {} #collect here the information
        with open(self.cpustat,'r') as f_stat:
            lines = [line.split(self.sep) for content in f_stat.readlines() for line in content.split('\n') if line.startswith('cpu')]

            #compute for every cpu
            for cpu_line in lines:
                if '' in cpu_line: cpu_line.remove('')#remove empty elements
                cpu_line = [cpu_line[0]]+[float(i) for i in cpu_line[1:]]#type casting
                cpu_id,user,nice,system,idle,iowait,irq,softrig,steal,guest,guest_nice = cpu_line

                Idle=idle+iowait
                NonIdle=user+nice+system+irq+softrig+steal

                Total=Idle+NonIdle
                #update dictionionary
                cpu_infos.update({cpu_id:{'total':Total,'idle':Idle}})
            return cpu_infos

    def getcpuload(self):
        '''
        CPU_Percentage=((Total-PrevTotal)-(Idle-PrevIdle))/(Total-PrevTotal)

        '''
        start = self.getcputime()
        #wait a second
        sleep(self.sleeptime)
        stop = self.getcputime()

        cpu_load = {}

        for cpu in start:
            Total = stop[cpu]['total']
            PrevTotal = start[cpu]['total']

            Idle = stop[cpu]['idle']
            PrevIdle = start[cpu]['idle']
            CPU_Percentage=((Total-PrevTotal)-(Idle-PrevIdle))/(Total-PrevTotal)*100
            cpu_load.update({cpu: CPU_Percentage})
        return cpu_load


if __name__=='__main__':
    x = GetCpuLoad()
    while True:
        try:
            data = x.getcpuload()
            print data
        except KeyboardInterrupt:

            sys.exit("Finished")                

Answer 5

idnt.net has a good description for how to use the /proc/stat cpu data, include a bash-script for extracting cpu and description of the lines. I just wanted to link it here, since I found it valuable.