System statistics

Plugin: proc.plugin Module: /proc/stat

Overview

CPU utilization, states and frequencies and key Linux system performance metrics.

The /proc/stat file provides various types of system statistics:

• The overall system CPU usage statistics
• Per CPU core statistics
• The total context switching of the system
• The total number of processes running
• The total CPU interrupts
• The total CPU softirqs

The collector also reads:

• /proc/schedstat for statistics about the process scheduler in the Linux kernel.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/thermal_throttle/core_throttle_count to get the count of thermal throttling events for a specific CPU core on Linux systems.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/thermal_throttle/package_throttle_count to get the count of thermal throttling events for a specific CPU package on a Linux system.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq to get the current operating frequency of a specific CPU core.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state to get the amount of time the CPU has spent in each of its available frequency states.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/cpuidle/state[X]/name to get the names of the idle states for each CPU core in a Linux system.
• /sys/devices/system/cpu/[X]/cpuidle/state[X]/time to get the total time each specific CPU core has spent in each idle state since the system was started.

This collector is only supported on the following platforms:

• linux

This collector only supports collecting metrics from a single instance of this integration.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

The collector auto-detects all metrics. No configuration is needed.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

The collector disables cpu frequency and idle state monitoring when there are more than 128 CPU cores available.

Setup

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

Options

Config options

Option	Description	Default	Required
per cpu core utilization	Collects CPU usage metrics for each individual core, in addition to the system-wide averages.	no	no
cpu idle states	Collects CPU idle state residency metrics for each individual core, showing how much time each core spends in different idle states (C-states).	no	no

via File

The configuration file name for this integration is netdata.conf. Configuration for this specific integration is located in the plugin:proc:/proc/stat section within that file.

The file format is a modified INI syntax. The general structure is:

[section1]
    option1 = some value
    option2 = some other value

[section2]
    option3 = some third value

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

Examples

There are no configuration examples.

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert name	On metric	Description
Alert name 10min_cpu_usage	On metricsystem.cpu	Descriptionaverage CPU utilization over the last 10 minutes (excluding iowait, nice and steal)
Alert name 10min_cpu_iowait	On metricsystem.cpu	Descriptionaverage CPU iowait time over the last 10 minutes
Alert name 20min_steal_cpu	On metricsystem.cpu	Descriptionaverage CPU steal time over the last 20 minutes

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per System statistics instance

This scope has no labels.

Metrics:

Metric	Description	Dimensions	Unit
system.cpu	Total CPU utilization	guest_nice, guest, steal, softirq, irq, user, system, nice, iowait, idle	percentage
system.intr	CPU Interrupts	interrupts	interrupts/s
system.ctxt	CPU Context Switches	switches	context switches/s
system.forks	Started Processes	started	processes/s
system.processes	System Processes	running, blocked	processes
cpu.core_throttling	Core Thermal Throttling Events	a dimension per cpu core	events/s
cpu.package_throttling	Package Thermal Throttling Events	a dimension per package	events/s
cpu.cpufreq	Current CPU Frequency	a dimension per cpu core	MHz

Per cpu core

Per-core CPU metrics. Disabled by default, can be enabled in the configuration options.

Labels:

Label	Description
cpu	Identifier of the CPU core (e.g., cpu0, cpu1, cpu2).

Metrics:

Metric	Description	Dimensions	Unit
cpu.cpu	Core utilization	guest_nice, guest, steal, softirq, irq, user, system, nice, iowait, idle	percentage
cpuidle.cpu_cstate_residency_time	C-state residency time	a dimension per c-state	percentage