Tracking memory and CPU usage of a software
 

Hi,
How can I keep a record of the memory usage of a particular software?
The software I have in mind is firefox. All I want to do is to record the memory and cpu usage in regular intervals of time.
htop (top) revels that firefox runs with many PIDs. So, is there a single command to keep track of the complete PIDs of firefox. If there exists a command to check the total usage at an instant I can write a script to run it periodically..
-Cheers
indiajoe

There is a commercial product called Measureware that lets one tie processes/applications together to get performance history on them. (It is from HP).

On checking for Open Source recommendations like Measureware I found this one:
http://collectl.sourceforge.net/

I haven't used it myself but it looks like it might fit your need (or be a bit of overkill).

Thanks a lot..
It would have been nice, if any command which is already present in every distro could be used.
-indiajoe

"It would have been nice, if any command which is already present in every distro could be used."

this really sums up why I wrote collectl. there aren't any consistent tools for monitoring system counters. there are certainly plenty of tools, but they all do it differently. some log to files, some don't. some provide timestamps, some don't. some show instance level data, some don't.

so while collectl isn't on all distros it certainly runs on all and it DOES do everything consistently, or at least tries to wherever it can.

-mark