mpstat: Displaying CPU Statistics for Each Available CPU

Functionality:
The mpstat command is used to display statistics for each available CPU.

Syntax:
mpstat [ options ]

Overview:
mpstat (Multi-Processor Statistics) is a tool for displaying statistics on the performance of individual CPUs, functioning as a real-time monitoring utility. While similar to vmstat, mpstat focuses solely on CPU performance statistics. To install mpstat on Ubuntu or CentOS, you can use the following commands:

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt install sysstat

For CentOS:

sudo yum install sysstat

Options:

• -P: Specify a CPU number or use ALL to display statistics for all CPUs.

Examples:

Running mpstat without any options will display overall performance statistics for all CPUs:

$ mpstat
Linux 6.8.0-45-generic (Ubuntu22-VirtualBox)   2024年10月15日   _x86_64_   (2 CPU)

13:48:03     CPU   %usr   %nice   %sys   %iowait   %irq   %soft   %steal   %guest   %gnice   %idle
13:48:03     all   0.11   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.17     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.60

Using the -P ALL option provides both overall CPU performance statistics as well as detailed statistics for each individual CPU:

$ mpstat -P ALL
Linux 6.8.0-45-generic (Ubuntu22-VirtualBox)   2024年10月15日   _x86_64_   (2 CPU)

13:59:40     CPU   %usr   %nice   %sys   %iowait   %irq   %soft   %steal   %guest   %gnice   %idle
13:59:40     all   0.11   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.17     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.60
13:59:40       0   0.11   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.31     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.45
13:59:40       1   0.10   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.03     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.75

You can also specify a particular CPU by using the -P n option, where n represents the CPU number starting from 0:

$ mpstat -P 0
Linux 6.8.0-45-generic (Ubuntu22-VirtualBox)   2024年10月15日   _x86_64_   (2 CPU)

14:18:14     CPU   %usr   %nice   %sys   %iowait   %irq   %soft   %steal   %guest   %gnice   %idle
14:18:14       0   0.11   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.31     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.45

$ mpstat -P 1
Linux 6.8.0-45-generic (Ubuntu22-VirtualBox)   2024年10月15日   _x86_64_   (2 CPU)

14:18:17     CPU   %usr   %nice   %sys   %iowait   %irq   %soft   %steal   %guest   %gnice   %idle
14:18:17       1   0.10   0.02    0.10     0.01    0.00    0.03     0.00     0.00     0.00   99.75

Field Descriptions:

• %usr: Percentage of CPU time spent in user mode (excluding processes with a negative nice value). Calculation: (usr/total)*100
• %nice: Percentage of CPU time spent on processes with a negative nice value. Calculation: (nice/total)*100
• %sys: Percentage of CPU time spent in kernel mode. Calculation: (system/total)*100
• %iowait: Percentage of time spent waiting for I/O operations. Calculation: (iowait/total)*100
• %irq: Percentage of CPU time spent handling hardware interrupts. Calculation: (irq/total)*100
• %soft: Percentage of CPU time spent handling software interrupts. Calculation: (softirq/total)*100
• %idle: Percentage of CPU time spent idle, excluding time waiting for I/O operations. Calculation: (idle/total)*100