/proc/stat cpu info

GDarkBladE · 10-07-2005, 04:23 PM

I'm working on a way to graph the load on both cpu's in an SMP system with kernel 2.6.12. The data to calculate the loads is in /proc/stat, but man proc and all info pages on /proc/stat only list 4 values - user/nice/system/idle
my system has 8 numbers for each cpu!

cpu 1199107 0 246925 212921410 362550 4623 18624 0
cpu0 729178 0 128171 106183948 312786 4623 17918 0
cpu1 469929 0 118754 106737461 49764 0 706 0

why the extra 4 values? anyone?

cardy · 10-10-2005, 07:22 AM

The stats do vary depending upon your CPU but assuming you have an x86 the values according the the kernel documentation (kernel 2.6.13) the values have the following meanings.

Code:

The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers 
in all  of the other "cpuN" lines.  These numbers 
identify the amount of time the CPU has spent 
performingdifferent kinds of work.  Time units are 
in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a second).  
The meanings of the columns are as follows, from 
left to right:

- user: normal processes executing in user mode
- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
- system: processes executing in kernel mode
- idle: twiddling thumbs
- iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
- irq: servicing interrupts
- softirq: servicing softirqs

GDarkBladE · 10-11-2005, 03:16 PM

there's actually 8 on mine and the last is a 0, but as long as the first 4 are still user,nice,system,idle I should be able to add the first 3 and get a percentage of #4 to get the actual load. (the exact calculation is floating around the net, I'll dig it back up). Thanks for the clarification