PIDSTAT(1) Linux User's Manual PIDSTAT(1)
NAME
pidstat - Report statistics for Linux tasks.
SYNOPSIS
pidstat [ -d ] [ -H ] [ -h ] [ -I ] [ -l ] [ -R ] [ -r ] [ -s ] [ -t ] [
-U [ username ] ] [ -u ] [ -V ] [ -v ] [ -w ] [ -C comm ] [ -G
process_name ] [ --dec={ 0 | 1 | 2 } ] [ --human ] [ -p { pid[,...] |
SELF | ALL } ] [ -T { TASK | CHILD | ALL } ] [ interval [ count ] ] [ -e
program args ]
DESCRIPTION
The pidstat command is used for monitoring individual tasks currently
being managed by the Linux kernel. It writes to standard output activi-
ties for every task selected with option -p or for every task managed by
the Linux kernel if option -p ALL has been used. Not selecting any tasks
is equivalent to specifying -p ALL but only active tasks (tasks with
non-zero statistics values) will appear in the report.
The pidstat command can also be used for monitoring the child processes
of selected tasks. Read about option -T below.
The interval parameter specifies the amount of time in seconds between
each report. A value of 0 (or no parameters at all) indicates that
tasks statistics are to be reported for the time since system startup
(boot). The count parameter can be specified in conjunction with the in-
terval parameter if this one is not set to zero. The value of count de-
termines the number of reports generated at interval seconds apart. If
the interval parameter is specified without the count parameter, the
pidstat command generates reports continuously.
You can select information about specific task activities using flags.
Not specifying any flags selects only CPU activity.
OPTIONS
-C comm
Display only tasks whose command name includes the string comm.
This string can be a regular expression.
-d Report I/O statistics (kernels 2.6.20 and later only). The fol-
lowing values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
kB_rd/s
Number of kilobytes the task has caused to be read from
disk per second.
kB_wr/s
Number of kilobytes the task has caused, or shall cause to
be written to disk per second.
kB_ccwr/s
Number of kilobytes whose writing to disk has been can-
celled by the task. This may occur when the task truncates
some dirty pagecache. In this case, some IO which another
task has been accounted for will not be happening.
iodelay
Block I/O delay of the task being monitored, measured in
clock ticks. This metric includes the delays spent waiting
for sync block I/O completion and for swapin block I/O
completion.
Command
The command name of the task.
--dec={ 0 | 1 | 2 }
Specify the number of decimal places to use (0 to 2, default
value is 2).
-e program args
Execute program with given arguments args and monitor it with
pidstat. pidstat stops when program terminates.
-G process_name
Display only processes whose command name includes the string
process_name. This string can be a regular expression. If option
-t is used together with option -G then the threads belonging to
that process are also displayed (even if their command name
doesn't include the string process_name).
-H Display timestamp in seconds since the epoch.
-h Display all activities horizontally on a single line, with no av-
erage statistics at the end of the report. This is intended to
make it easier to be parsed by other programs.
--human
Print sizes in human readable format (e.g. 1.0k, 1.2M, etc.) The
units displayed with this option supersede any other default
units (e.g. kilobytes, sectors...) associated with the metrics.
-I In an SMP environment, indicate that tasks CPU usage (as dis-
played by option -u) should be divided by the total number of
processors.
-l Display the process command name and all its arguments.
-p { pid[,...] | SELF | ALL }
Select tasks (processes) for which statistics are to be reported.
pid is the process identification number. The SELF keyword indi-
cates that statistics are to be reported for the pidstat process
itself, whereas the ALL keyword indicates that statistics are to
be reported for all the tasks managed by the system.
-R Report realtime priority and scheduling policy information. The
following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
prio The realtime priority of the task being monitored.
policy The scheduling policy of the task being monitored.
Command
The command name of the task.
-r Report page faults and memory utilization.
When reporting statistics for individual tasks, the following
values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
minflt/s
Total number of minor faults the task has made per second,
those which have not required loading a memory page from
disk.
majflt/s
Total number of major faults the task has made per second,
those which have required loading a memory page from disk.
VSZ Virtual Size: The virtual memory usage of entire task in
kilobytes.
RSS Resident Set Size: The non-swapped physical memory used by
the task in kilobytes.
%MEM The tasks's currently used share of available physical
memory.
Command
The command name of the task.
When reporting global statistics for tasks and all their chil-
dren, the following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task which is
being monitored together with its children.
USER The name of the real user owning the task which is being
monitored together with its children.
PID The identification number of the task which is being moni-
tored together with its children.
minflt-nr
Total number of minor faults made by the task and all its
children, and collected during the interval of time.
majflt-nr
Total number of major faults made by the task and all its
children, and collected during the interval of time.
Command
The command name of the task which is being monitored to-
gether with its children.
-s Report stack utilization. The following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
StkSize
The amount of memory in kilobytes reserved for the task as
stack, but not necessarily used.
StkRef The amount of memory in kilobytes used as stack, refer-
enced by the task.
Command
The command name of the task.
-T { TASK | CHILD | ALL }
This option specifies what has to be monitored by the pidstat
command. The TASK keyword indicates that statistics are to be re-
ported for individual tasks (this is the default option) whereas
the CHILD keyword indicates that statistics are to be globally
reported for the selected tasks and all their children. The ALL
keyword indicates that statistics are to be reported for individ-
ual tasks and globally for the selected tasks and their children.
Note: Global statistics for tasks and all their children are not
available for all options of pidstat. Also these statistics are
not necessarily relevant to current time interval: The statistics
of a child process are collected only when it finishes or it is
killed.
-t Also display statistics for threads associated with selected
tasks.
This option adds the following values to the reports:
TGID The identification number of the thread group leader.
TID The identification number of the thread being monitored.
-U [ username ]
Display the real user name of the tasks being monitored instead
of the UID. If username is specified, then only tasks belonging
to the specified user are displayed.
-u Report CPU utilization.
When reporting statistics for individual tasks, the following
values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
%usr Percentage of CPU used by the task while executing at the
user level (application), with or without nice priority.
Note that this field does NOT include time spent running a
virtual processor.
%system
Percentage of CPU used by the task while executing at the
system level (kernel).
%guest Percentage of CPU spent by the task in virtual machine
(running a virtual processor).
%wait Percentage of CPU spent by the task while waiting to run.
%CPU Total percentage of CPU time used by the task. In an SMP
environment, the task's CPU usage will be divided by the
total number of CPU's if option -I has been entered on the
command line.
CPU Processor number to which the task is attached.
Command
The command name of the task.
When reporting global statistics for tasks and all their chil-
dren, the following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task which is
being monitored together with its children.
USER The name of the real user owning the task which is being
monitored together with its children.
PID The identification number of the task which is being moni-
tored together with its children.
usr-ms Total number of milliseconds spent by the task and all its
children while executing at the user level (application),
with or without nice priority, and collected during the
interval of time. Note that this field does NOT include
time spent running a virtual processor.
system-ms
Total number of milliseconds spent by the task and all its
children while executing at the system level (kernel), and
collected during the interval of time.
guest-ms
Total number of milliseconds spent by the task and all its
children in virtual machine (running a virtual processor).
Command
The command name of the task which is being monitored to-
gether with its children.
-V Print version number then exit.
-v Report values of some kernel tables. The following values may be
displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
threads
Number of threads associated with current task.
fd-nr Number of file descriptors associated with current task.
Command
The command name of the task.
-w Report task switching activity (kernels 2.6.23 and later only).
The following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task being mon-
itored.
USER The name of the real user owning the task being monitored.
PID The identification number of the task being monitored.
cswch/s
Total number of voluntary context switches the task made
per second. A voluntary context switch occurs when a task
blocks because it requires a resource that is unavailable.
nvcswch/s
Total number of non voluntary context switches the task
made per second. An involuntary context switch takes
place when a task executes for the duration of its time
slice and then is forced to relinquish the processor.
Command
The command name of the task.
ENVIRONMENT
The pidstat command takes into account the following environment vari-
ables:
S_COLORS
By default statistics are displayed in color when the output is
connected to a terminal. Use this variable to change the set-
tings. Possible values for this variable are never, always or
auto (the latter is equivalent to the default settings).
Please note that the color (being red, yellow, or some other
color) used to display a value is not indicative of any kind of
issue simply because of the color. It only indicates different
ranges of values.
S_COLORS_SGR
Specify the colors and other attributes used to display statis-
tics on the terminal. Its value is a colon-separated list of ca-
pabilities that defaults to I=32;22:N=34;1:W=35;1:X=31;1:Z=34;22.
Supported capabilities are:
I= SGR (Select Graphic Rendition) substring for item values
like PID, UID or CPU number.
N= SGR substring for non-zero statistics values and for tasks
names.
W= (or M=)
SGR substring for percentage values in the range from 75%
to 90% (or in the range 10% to 25% depending on the met-
ric's meaning).
X= (or H=)
SGR substring for percentage values greater than or equal
to 90% (or lower than or equal to 10% depending on the
metric's meaning).
Z= SGR substring for zero values and for threads names.
S_TIME_FORMAT
If this variable exists and its value is ISO then the current lo-
cale will be ignored when printing the date in the report header.
The pidstat command will use the ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD) in-
stead. The timestamp will also be compliant with ISO 8601 for-
mat.
EXAMPLES
pidstat 2 5
Display five reports of CPU statistics for every active task in
the system at two second intervals.
pidstat -r -p 1643 2 5
Display five reports of page faults and memory statistics for PID
1643 at two second intervals.
pidstat -C "fox|bird" -r -p ALL
Display global page faults and memory statistics for all the
processes whose command name includes the string "fox" or "bird".
pidstat -T CHILD -r 2 5
Display five reports of page faults statistics at two second in-
tervals for the child processes of all tasks in the system. Only
child processes with non-zero statistics values are displayed.
BUGS
/proc filesystem must be mounted for the pidstat command to work.
Although pidstat speaks of kilobytes (kB), megabytes (MB)..., it actu-
ally uses kibibytes (kiB), mebibytes (MiB)... A kibibyte is equal to
1024 bytes, and a mebibyte is equal to 1024 kibibytes.
FILES
/proc contains various files with system statistics.
AUTHOR
Sebastien Godard (sysstat <at> orange.fr)
SEE ALSO
sar(1), top(1), ps(1), mpstat(1), iostat(1), vmstat(8)
https://github.com/sysstat/sysstat
https://sysstat.github.io/
Linux AUGUST 2023 PIDSTAT(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Sat Oct 3 05:38:51 CEST 2026.