Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262002AbTIMHMz (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 Sep 2003 03:12:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262063AbTIMHMz (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 Sep 2003 03:12:55 -0400 Received: from rwcrmhc13.comcast.net ([204.127.198.39]:36023 "EHLO rwcrmhc13.comcast.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262002AbTIMHMx (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 Sep 2003 03:12:53 -0400 Subject: Re: "busy" load counters From: Albert Cahalan To: linux-kernel mailing list Cc: xuan--lkml--2003.09.12@baldauf.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Organization: Message-Id: <1063436451.314.9010.camel@cube> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.4 Date: 13 Sep 2003 03:00:51 -0400 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2192 Lines: 54 Xu?n Baldauf writes: > Currently, tools like "top" show stats like > > Cpu(s): 92.1% user, 6.9% system, 0.0% nice, 1.0% idle > > Unfortunately, these stats are not sufficient to determine wether the > system is "busy". Determining wether the system is "busy" is very useful > in case an interactive application (e.g. a shell or some shell command) > does not respond. > Maybe it just hangs (waits for input) or does serious work (e.g. uses > the CPU or accesses the disk). Disk access is not visible in "top". > Depending on the machine, on disk accesses, there might be a slight or > significant rise in the "system" portion of those stats, but this is not > trustable. The feature is available, but you'll need to upgrade to procps-3.1.12 and linux-2.6.0-test4 at least. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ http://procps.sf.net/ Once you've done that, both "top" and "vmstat" will supply the info you want. There are 7 basic %CPU stats right now: us regular user apps sy system (general kernel stuff) ni nice user apps (low-priority tasks) id idle wa waiting for IO to complete hi hard interrupt (IRQ) handlers si soft interrupt (network stack, mostly?) handlers The "top" program shows all of those. The "vmstat" program mixes "ni" into "us", and mixes "hi" and "si" into "sy". An example for each: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 6896 2668 108896 0 0 0 1 34 14 10 3 87 0 top - 02:56:17 up 12 days, 13:43, 25 users, load average: 0.37, 0.25, 0.22 Tasks: 129 total, 4 running, 124 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 8.6% us, 5.6% sy, 0.0% ni, 85.8% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 513924k total, 507068k used, 6856k free, 2664k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 108844k cached - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/