How to get current cpu usage?

[aceO07]

Using standard linux (Ubuntu) commands, how do I get the printout of the current cpu usage. I will be capturing that text, so the program cannot loop/refresh. So, 'top' is not an option. 'mpstat' would be good, but it only shows avg since reboot.

 

[Crusty]

You can use 'ps'. One of the format specifiers is CPU usage.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Someone needs to read the man pages...

top -b -n 1

Will do exactly what you want.

 

[Ross Ridge]

I would think that "mpstat" does exactly what you want. Just run something like "mpstat 1 > cpu-usage.log" and it'll capture the CPU usage every second to a file.

 

[aceO07]

Thanks guys. I did do quite a bit of google searching for a solution before I resorted to posting here.

I think I'll try 'top -b -n 1' first.

 

[aceO07]

Someone needs to read the man pages...

top -b -n 1

Will do exactly what you want.

I finally got a chance to try this out. Unfortunately it doesn't work as expected. It also gives me the same % as mpstat, which isn't the current cpu usage but average for entire uptime, unless refreshing.

I decided to use this: 'top -b -n 2'

The 2nd iteration is the one with the current cpu usage.

 

[Khyron320]

For historical views try sar. Install sar and run sar -r -q for a historical text view of CPU+memory and system load.