cpuwatch

A program to report CPU usage

cpuwatch continuously checks /proc/uptime to determine the current CPU utilisation. It writes the utilisation to a file at regular intervals, and can be configured to measure a moving average of CPU utilisation over some time.

The specified file will contain the current CPU utilisation as a percentage to one decimal place e.g. 12.3%. The program continues until it is killed by a signal, or faults.

Usage:

cpuwatch <--output=/path/to/output> <--cpus=N> [options...]

Options:

• -h, --help:
  Displays a usage statement.
• -o FILE, --output=FILE:
  Write the CPU utilisation to FILE. (REQUIRED)
• -c CPUS, --cpus=CPUS:
  Assume that there are this number of CPUs installed. (REQUIRED)
• -n SAMPLES, --samples=SAMPLES:
  Take a moving average of this many intervals. (Default: 1)
• -i INTERVAL, --interval=INTERVAL:
  Each sample should be separated by this many seconds. May be a decimal number. (Default: 1)

Example

To update the file output every 0.5 seconds with the average CPU utilisation for the past 2.5 seconds on a 4-core system, run:

cpuwatch -o output -i0.5 -n5 -c4

The utilisation will be averaged over 2.5 seconds because a moving average of 5 intervals is taken.

To update the file output every second with the average CPU utilisation for the previous second on a 4-core system, run:

cpuwatch -o output -c 4

Building

To build cpuwatch, run:

make

Build Dependencies

• gcc
• libc
• gzip (for compressing man-page)

Installing

To install the program, run:

make install
make install-man

This installs cpuwatch to /usr/bin and the manual page to /usr/share/man by default, to change the install directories, run:

make install binprefix=/path/to/install
make install-man manprefix=/path/to/man

Runtime Dependencies

• libc