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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | EXAMPLES | BUGS | FILES | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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PIDSTAT(1) Linux User's Manual PIDSTAT(1)
pidstat - Report statistics for Linux tasks.
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 ] [ -o JSON ]
[ -p { pid[,...] | SELF | ALL } ] [ -T { TASK | CHILD | ALL } ] [
interval [ count ] ] [ -e program args ]
The pidstat command is used for monitoring individual tasks
currently being managed by the Linux kernel. It writes to
standard output activities 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 interval parameter if this one is not set
to zero. The value of count determines 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.
-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
following values may be displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task
being monitored.
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 kibibytes the task has caused to be read
from disk per second.
kB_wr/s
Number of kibibytes the task has caused, or shall
cause to be written to disk per second.
kB_ccwr/s
Number of kibibytes whose writing to disk has been
cancelled 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. A
non-zero value must be specified for the interval
parameter.
-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 average 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. kibibytes, sectors...)
associated with the metrics.
-I In an SMP environment, indicate that tasks CPU usage (as
displayed by option -u) should be divided by the total
number of processors.
-l Display the process command name and all its arguments.
-o JSON
Display the statistics in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
format. JSON output field order is undefined, and new
fields may be added in the future.
-p { pid[,...] | SELF | ALL }
Select tasks (processes) for which statistics are to be
reported. pid is the process identification number. The
SELF keyword indicates 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 monitored.
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 monitored.
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 kibibytes.
RSS Resident Set Size: The non-swapped physical memory
used by the task in kibibytes.
%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
children, 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
monitored 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 together with its children.
-s Report stack utilization. The following values may be
displayed:
UID The real user identification number of the task
being monitored.
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 kibibytes reserved for the
task as stack, but not necessarily used.
StkRef The amount of memory in kibibytes used as stack,
referenced 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 reported 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 individual 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 monitored.
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
children, 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
monitored 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 together 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 monitored.
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 monitored.
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.
The pidstat command takes into account the following environment
variables:
S_COLORS
By default statistics are displayed in color when the
output is connected to a terminal. Use this variable to
change the settings. 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
statistics on the terminal. Its value is a colon-separated
list of capabilities 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 metric'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 locale will be ignored when printing the date in
the report header. The pidstat command will use the ISO
8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD) instead. The timestamp will also
be compliant with ISO 8601 format.
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 intervals for the child processes of all tasks in
the system. Only child processes with non-zero statistics
values are displayed.
/proc filesystem must be mounted for the pidstat command to work.
Although pidstat displays units corresponding to kilobytes (kB),
megabytes (MB)..., it actually uses kibibytes (kiB), mebibytes
(MiB)... A kibibyte is equal to 1024 bytes, and a mebibyte is
equal to 1024 kibibytes.
/proc contains various files with system statistics.
Sebastien Godard (sysstat <at> orange.fr)
sar(1), top(1), ps(1), mpstat(1), iostat(1), vmstat(8)
https://github.com/sysstat/sysstat
https://sysstat.github.io/
This page is part of the sysstat (sysstat performance monitoring
tools) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-orange.fr/⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, send it to sysstat-AT-orange.fr.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/sysstat/sysstat.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-04.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Linux JANUARY 2025 PIDSTAT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: cifsiostat(1), iostat(1), mpstat(1), pcp-pidstat(1), sar(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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