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

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