/proc/stat
kernel/system statistics. Varies with architecture.
Common entries include:
user nice system idle iowait irq softirq steal guest guest_nice
cpu 4705 356 584 3699 23 23 0 0 0 0
cpu0 1393280 32966 572056 13343292 6130 0 17875 0 23933 0
The amount of time, measured in units of USER_HZ
(1/100ths of a second on most architectures, use
sysconf(_SC_CLK_TCK) to obtain the right value), that
the system ("cpu" line) or the specific CPU ("cpuN"
line) spent in various states:
user (1) Time spent in user mode.
nice (2) Time spent in user mode with low priority
(nice).
system (3) Time spent in system mode.
idle (4) Time spent in the idle task. This value
should be USER_HZ times the second entry in the
/proc/uptime pseudo-file.
iowait (since Linux 2.5.41)
(5) Time waiting for I/O to complete. This
value is not reliable, for the following rea?\
sons:
1. The CPU will not wait for I/O to complete;
iowait is the time that a task is waiting for
I/O to complete. When a CPU goes into idle
state for outstanding task I/O, another task
will be scheduled on this CPU.
2. On a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O
to complete is not running on any CPU, so the
iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
3. The value in this field may decrease in cer?\
tain conditions.
irq (since Linux 2.6.0-test4)
(6) Time servicing interrupts.
softirq (since Linux 2.6.0-test4)
(7) Time servicing softirqs.
steal (since Linux 2.6.11)
(8) Stolen time, which is the time spent in
other operating systems when running in a virtu?\
alized environment
guest (since Linux 2.6.24)
(9) Time spent running a virtual CPU for guest
operating systems under the control of the Linux
kernel.
guest_nice (since Linux 2.6.33)
(10) Time spent running a niced guest (virtual
CPU for guest operating systems under the con?\
trol of the Linux kernel).
