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

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")