Monitor CPU usage for specific processes on Linux

[linuxgurugamer]

I had a need to monitor the cpu usage of a specific process. Actually, all processes with a specific name. I came up with the following, hopefully someone else will find this useful:

I am using the following assumptions:

1. Zabbix conf file is located in /etc/zabbix
2. The process(es) being monitored is called: openvpn
You can change openvpn to any process you want to monitor.
3. A bin directory will be created by you in /etc/zabbix/bin
4. A data directory will be created by you in /etc/zabbix/data, and the group/ownership will be changed to the Zabbix user.


There are two files attached to this message. One is a C program called clean.c. Save it, and compile it using:

cc clean.c -o clean

The second file is a shell script, save it and rename it to

getproctime.sh

The script makes the assumption that it and the C program will be installed on the client in:

/etc/zabbix/bin

On the client, add the following line to /etc/zabbix_agentd:

UserParameter=openvpn.cpu,/etc/zabbix/bin/getproctime.sh openvpn

and restart the agent. I did it this way because I was unable to get the system.run() working on Linux.

On the server, create an Item to monitor the usage. Add the following for the key:

openvpn.cpu

Set the update interval to 5, and if possible, make it an agent. If you like, you can add a percent sign to the Units field. I am using this as an active agent.

Save it, and watch the monitoring. I use this as a standard agent, I haven't had luck yet with the active agent.

[Zaniwoop]

you might want to look at http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthre...ht=CPU+Process

[tof233]

Thank you Linuxgurugamer for this script.

I was just trying to developp my own script to get process cpu usage and was blocked by the fact that "ps -o pcpu ... "return cpu usage since the process started and "top -n 1 -p pid1,pid2..." is limited to 20 pids.

However I noticed in your script:

# This shell-script watch that <process> doesn't pass the <limit> of % cpu usage
# If it does, the script kills that process and finish

and did not find where your script would kill it (However, I don't need this functionality).