/proc/stat

1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
-------------------------------------------------

Various pieces   of  information about  kernel activity  are  available in the
/proc/stat file.  All  of  the numbers reported  in  this file are  aggregates
since the system first booted.  For a quick look, simply cat the file:

  > cat /proc/stat
  cpu  2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0
  cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0
  cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0
  intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...]
  ctxt 1990473
  btime 1062191376
  processes 2915
  procs_running 1
  procs_blocked 0

The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers in all  of the other "cpuN"
lines.  These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
different kinds of work.  Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
second).  The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:

- user: normal processes executing in user mode
- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
- system: processes executing in kernel mode
- idle: twiddling thumbs
- iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
- irq: servicing interrupts
- softirq: servicing softirqs
- steal: involuntary wait

The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts  serviced since boot time, for each
of the  possible system interrupts.   The first  column  is the  total of  all
interrupts serviced; each  subsequent column is the  total for that particular
interrupt.

The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.

The "btime" line gives  the time at which the  system booted, in seconds since
the Unix epoch.

The "processes" line gives the number  of processes and threads created, which
includes (but  is not limited  to) those  created by  calls to the  fork() and
clone() system calls.

The  "procs_running" line gives the  number of processes  currently running on
CPUs.

The   "procs_blocked" line gives  the  number of  processes currently blocked,
waiting for I/O to complete.