topic Re: CPU Utilization in UNIX in Operating System - HP-UX

CPU Utilization in UNIX

sathis kumar — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:30:24 GMT

Hello,

We need to track the CPU utilization in UNIX system [find out any process affects the performance of the system] and for that can you provide the commands that can be used? FYI - vmstat/top/glance does not work in the UNIX system that we use.

Also, can you tell about the use of 'ps -e -o pcpu -o pid -o user -o args' & sar command? what do we interpret from 'ps -e -o pcpu -o pid -o user -o args' command? For eg. if we have three different processes having the below usage:

33% <process 1>

33% <process 2>

33% <process 3>

what does it indicate?

Thanks in advance.

Re: CPU Utilization in UNIX

James R. Ferguson — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:25:29 GMT

Hi:

> FYI - vmstat/top/glance does not work in the UNIX system that we use.

That is not descriptive at all. I think you mean that whatever data you are examining from these tools doesn't lead you to the answer you want.

> what do we interpret from 'ps -e -o pcpu -o pid -o user -o args' command?

This is UNIX95 (XPG4) behavior. If you are truly running HP-UX you will need to set UNIX95. The safe way to do this is only for the duratation of the command line needing it:

# UNIX95= ps -e -o pcpu -o pid -o user -o args

Notice the whitespace after the "=" and before the 'ps' command.

The manpages are your friend. Read them. The 'ps' command above says to look at every process ('-e') and return the 'pcpu', 'pid', 'user' and 'args' for that process as columns in the output. THis is known as creating a custom output format. Read the manpages!

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: CPU Utilization in UNIX

Dennis Handly — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:58:46 GMT

>if we have three different processes having the below usage, what does it indicate?

It could indicate you only have one CPU and the same/similar process is running and getting equal shares.