BASH script that shows the history of CPU usage, and what procces uses the most CPU at a given time.

Bar graphs represent the percentage of Total CPU Usage, and the percentage of Total 1 Minute Load Average.

Default wait interval between system readings is 5secs. But a different one can be set in the command line with the -i argument. Default output is formatted for the standard console width of 80 columns, and will show only the bar chart for the CPU usage. To change this, use the -w argument explained below in the "usage" section.

The script detects when the system is in SLEEP mode and shows the "ASLEEP" text.

Developer: Ismael Antadillas

BSD 3 License

cpuplot -i [seconds] -w [small medium large xlarge]

Where:

-i interval time in seconds between CPU readings.

-w width of the output, "small", "medium", "large", "xlarge"

Example: cpuplot -i 9 -w xlarge

The command above will set the time intervals to 9 seconds and shows the plot bars for total % of CPU usage and total % of load average.

%MEMp Percentage of RAM memory used by the process.

%MEMt Total percentage of RAM memory used.

%CPUp Percentage of CPU used by the process.

%CPUt Total percentage of CPU being used.

%LA1m Percentage of one minute Load Average.

As described in the man page for the "ps" command: "The CPU utilization of the process is a decaying average over up to a minute of previous (real) time. Because the time base over which this is computed varies (some processes may be very young), it is possible for the sum of all %cpu fields to exceed 100%."

Because of the above some values for the "Total CPU Usage" may be over 100%. When this happens, the bar plot will be truncated to 100%.

The 1 minute Load Average Percentage, is calculated dividing the 1 minute Load Average by the number of Cores in the system.

The following command will have the output of cpuplot displayed to the console and also written to a file:

cpuplot 2>&1 | tee outputFilename

Using cpuplot with no arguments, will use the default arguments of -i 5 for 5 seconds intervals, and -w medium to show only the plot of cpu usage and fit in a standard 80 columns console.