pidstat

Monitor individual tasks managed by the Linux kernel

TLDR

Show CPU statistics at 2 second interval, 10 reports

$ pidstat 2 10

Show page faults and memory utilization

$ pidstat -r

Show I/O usage per process

$ pidstat -d

Show information for a specific PID

$ pidstat -p 1234

Show memory statistics for processes matching pattern

$ pidstat -C "pattern" -r -p ALL

Show context switches

$ pidstat -w

Execute and monitor a specific program

$ pidstat -e [program] [args] 1

Show output in JSON format

$ pidstat -o JSON 1 5

pidstat [-d] [-H] [-h] [-I] [-l] [-R] [-r] [-s] [-t] [-U [username]] [-u] [-v] [-w] [-C comm] [-G processname] [--human] [-o JSON] [-p {pid|SELF|ALL}] [-T {TASK|CHILD|ALL}] [interval] [count] [-e program args_]

DESCRIPTION

pidstat is used for monitoring individual tasks currently being managed by the Linux kernel. It reports CPU usage, memory utilization, I/O statistics, context switches, and other resource usage for selected processes or all tasks.

PARAMETERS

-d

Display I/O statistics (disk reads/writes, I/O delays)

-r

Report page faults and memory utilization metrics

-u

Show CPU usage percentages (default if no option specified)

-w

Display voluntary and involuntary context switches

-s

Report stack memory usage

-t

Include thread statistics for selected tasks

-p {pid|SELF|ALL}

Select specific process(es), current process, or all tasks

-T {TASK|CHILD|ALL}

Monitor individual tasks, children, or both

-C comm

Filter by command name using regex patterns

-G process_name

Display processes matching name pattern

-l

Show full command names with arguments

--human

Format output in human-readable sizes (1.0k, 1.2M)

-e program args

Execute and monitor a specific program

-h

Show all activities horizontally on a single line; omits average statistics at end of report

-H

Display timestamp in seconds since epoch

-I

In SMP environments, divide CPU usage by total number of processors

-o JSON

Output statistics in JSON format

-R

Report realtime priority and scheduling policy information

-U [username]

Display real username of the tasks; optionally filter by specified user

-v

Report values of kernel tables: number of threads and file descriptors

--dec={0|1|2}

Specify the number of decimal places to use (default: 2)

CAVEATS

When using -e to run and monitor a program, a non-zero interval value must be specified. The interval and count parameters control reporting frequency and duration.The `/proc` filesystem must be mounted for pidstat to work. Specifying an interval of 0 or omitting it reports statistics accumulated since system startup.

HISTORY

pidstat is part of the sysstat package, developed by Sebastien Godard. It provides per-process statistics that complement system-wide tools like mpstat and iostat.