Monitoring the performance of the system’s CPU is a very important task of every system administrator. With CPU performance, it becomes easy to monitor system debug and monitor resources. There are many Linux tools and commands to monitor System CPU Resource and performance . CPU Utilization In Linux article, we will learn about the commands that monitor the performance of the CPU of a Linux system .
Prerequisites
- A Linux-based system (like Ubuntu and CentOS etc)
- Access the system from root Account OR with sudo privileges
- Open Terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T OR Menu > Applications > Utilities > Terminal )
Use Top Command To CPU Utilization In Linux
Top command is a very popular and useful command for every system administrator . With the help of top command, all the Real Time running process information can be obtained in Linux system such as cpu load, memory Status, running process, user information etc. When we run this command in the terminal, the summary report of all the processes running in the system is display in the Screen, you can manage the top process report from various option .
$ top

In the top man line number 3 in the above screen, you can check the Brief System CPU Performance report, so that you can know how much CPU is used for which task .
Related Article : What Is Top Command Details Information
mpstat Command to Display CPU Activity
mpstat is a type of Linux bundle which is also called sysstat, most Linux based operating systems is use this software to check CPU, memory, user activities and Other system process .
If you are using Debian and Ubuntu system then run below command to install sysstat package.
sudo apt-get install sysstat
If you are working on Linux and newer version of Ubuntu then run the command given below to install the sysstat package.
sudo yum install sysstat
After the sysstat package is successfully installed in the system, run the mpstat command in the system terminal. As the command is executed, you will get a brief report of the process running in the system.

Sar Command to Check CPU Utilization
With the help of sar command, you can monitor all processes running in the Linux system such as CPU usage, I/O devices consumption, network monitoring, memory utilization, disk usage, process and thread allocation etc.
sar -u 5
If you run sar command in Linux system then system by defaults will show only latest 3 status if you want to display process report according to your time then use number with option U like we use 5 number after option U With this, the system will show the CPU’s process report every 5 seconds, which it easy to manage the CPU performance and use of CPU resources.

iostat Command to get CPU Report
iostat is used to generate a report of the input/output load on the hard disk. If you want to know the system report in details through the iostat command, use the -x option with the command.
If the package for iostat is not already installed in the system, then install it first .
On RedHat / CentOS / Fedora

$ yum install sysstat
On Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint
$ apt-get install sysstat
If you run this command without any argument, then the system gives you all the details information after boot the system, you can use parameters to change the report according to your Requirement. Use –c parameter to check report of CPU only by this command For more information use man help command.

Graphical Utility Option
You can use this Graphical Utility option to monitor all the system statics and running process reports. By defaults It is have a built-in graphical monitoring tool in all Linux operating systems. through this utility you can check the report of CPU, Memory and swap history , network load, etc. in a graphical format. It is the most lightweight GUI tool to monitor system’s process and resources.

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