Summary

psutil (process and system utilities) is a cross-platform library for retrieving information on running processes and system utilization (CPU, memory, disks, network, sensors) in Python. It is useful mainly for system monitoring, profiling and limiting process resources and management of running processes. It implements many functionalities offered by UNIX command line tools such as: ps, top, lsof, netstat, ifconfig, who, df, kill, free, nice, ionice, iostat, iotop, uptime, pidof, tty, taskset, pmap. psutil currently supports the following platforms:

Linux
Windows
macOS,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
Sun Solaris
AIX

...both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, with Python versions 2.6, 2.7, and 3.4+. PyPy is also known to work.

Example applications

Also see scripts directory and doc recipes.

Projects using psutil

At the time of writing psutil has roughly 2.9 milion downloads per month and there are over 8000 open source projects on github which depend from psutil. Here's some I find particularly interesting:

https://github.com/facebook/osquery/
https://github.com/nicolargo/glances
https://github.com/google/grr
https://github.com/Jahaja/psdash
https://github.com/ajenti/ajenti
https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/

Portings

Go: https://github.com/shirou/gopsutil
C: https://github.com/hamon-in/cpslib
Node: https://github.com/christkv/node-psutil
Rust: https://github.com/borntyping/rust-psutil
Ruby: https://github.com/spacewander/posixpsutil
Nim: https://github.com/johnscillieri/psutil-nim

Example usages

CPU

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.cpu_times()
scputimes(user=3961.46, nice=169.729, system=2150.659, idle=16900.540, iowait=629.59, irq=0.0, softirq=19.42, steal=0.0, guest=0, nice=0.0)
>>>
>>> for x in range(3):
...     psutil.cpu_percent(interval=1)
...
4.0
5.9
3.8
>>>
>>> for x in range(3):
...     psutil.cpu_percent(interval=1, percpu=True)
...
[4.0, 6.9, 3.7, 9.2]
[7.0, 8.5, 2.4, 2.1]
[1.2, 9.0, 9.9, 7.2]
>>>
>>> for x in range(3):
...     psutil.cpu_times_percent(interval=1, percpu=False)
...
scputimes(user=1.5, nice=0.0, system=0.5, idle=96.5, iowait=1.5, irq=0.0, softirq=0.0, steal=0.0, guest=0.0, guest_nice=0.0)
scputimes(user=1.0, nice=0.0, system=0.0, idle=99.0, iowait=0.0, irq=0.0, softirq=0.0, steal=0.0, guest=0.0, guest_nice=0.0)
scputimes(user=2.0, nice=0.0, system=0.0, idle=98.0, iowait=0.0, irq=0.0, softirq=0.0, steal=0.0, guest=0.0, guest_nice=0.0)
>>>
>>> psutil.cpu_count()
4
>>> psutil.cpu_count(logical=False)
2
>>>
>>> psutil.cpu_stats()
scpustats(ctx_switches=20455687, interrupts=6598984, soft_interrupts=2134212, syscalls=0)
>>>
>>> psutil.cpu_freq()
scpufreq(current=931.42925, min=800.0, max=3500.0)
>>>

Memory

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.virtual_memory()
svmem(total=10367352832, available=6472179712, percent=37.6, used=8186245120, free=2181107712, active=4748992512, inactive=2758115328, buffers=790724608, cached=3500347392, shared=787554304)
>>> psutil.swap_memory()
sswap(total=2097147904, used=296128512, free=1801019392, percent=14.1, sin=304193536, sout=677842944)
>>>

Disks

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.disk_partitions()
[sdiskpart(device='/dev/sda1', mountpoint='/', fstype='ext4', opts='rw,nosuid'),
 sdiskpart(device='/dev/sda2', mountpoint='/home', fstype='ext, opts='rw')]
>>>
>>> psutil.disk_usage('/')
sdiskusage(total=21378641920, used=4809781248, free=15482871808, percent=22.5)
>>>
>>> psutil.disk_io_counters(perdisk=False)
sdiskio(read_count=719566, write_count=1082197, read_bytes=18626220032, write_bytes=24081764352, read_time=5023392, write_time=63199568, read_merged_count=619166, write_merged_count=812396, busy_time=4523412)
>>>

Network

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.net_io_counters(pernic=True)
{'eth0': netio(bytes_sent=485291293, bytes_recv=6004858642, packets_sent=3251564, packets_recv=4787798, errin=0, errout=0, dropin=0, dropout=0),
 'lo': netio(bytes_sent=2838627, bytes_recv=2838627, packets_sent=30567, packets_recv=30567, errin=0, errout=0, dropin=0, dropout=0)}
>>>
>>> psutil.net_connections()
[sconn(fd=115, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=48776), raddr=addr(ip='93.186.135.91', port=80), status='ESTABLISHED', pid=1254),
 sconn(fd=117, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=43761), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.100', port=80), status='CLOSING', pid=2987),
 sconn(fd=-1, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=60759), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.104', port=80), status='ESTABLISHED', pid=None),
 sconn(fd=-1, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=51314), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.83', port=443), status='SYN_SENT', pid=None)
 ...]
>>>
>>> psutil.net_if_addrs()
{'lo': [snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, address='127.0.0.1', netmask='255.0.0.0', broadcast='127.0.0.1', ptp=None),
        snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET6: 10>, address='::1', netmask='ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff', broadcast=None, ptp=None),
        snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_LINK: 17>, address='00:00:00:00:00:00', netmask=None, broadcast='00:00:00:00:00:00', ptp=None)],
 'wlan0': [snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, address='192.168.1.3', netmask='255.255.255.0', broadcast='192.168.1.255', ptp=None),
           snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET6: 10>, address='fe80::c685:8ff:fe45:641%wlan0', netmask='ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::', broadcast=None, ptp=None),
           snicaddr(family=<AddressFamily.AF_LINK: 17>, address='c4:85:08:45:06:41', netmask=None, broadcast='ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff', ptp=None)]}
>>>
>>> psutil.net_if_stats()
{'eth0': snicstats(isup=True, duplex=<NicDuplex.NIC_DUPLEX_FULL: 2>, speed=100, mtu=1500),
 'lo': snicstats(isup=True, duplex=<NicDuplex.NIC_DUPLEX_UNKNOWN: 0>, speed=0, mtu=65536)}
>>>

Sensors

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.sensors_temperatures()
{'acpitz': [shwtemp(label='', current=47.0, high=103.0, critical=103.0)],
 'asus': [shwtemp(label='', current=47.0, high=None, critical=None)],
 'coretemp': [shwtemp(label='Physical id 0', current=52.0, high=100.0, critical=100.0),
              shwtemp(label='Core 0', current=45.0, high=100.0, critical=100.0),
              shwtemp(label='Core 1', current=52.0, high=100.0, critical=100.0),
              shwtemp(label='Core 2', current=45.0, high=100.0, critical=100.0),
              shwtemp(label='Core 3', current=47.0, high=100.0, critical=100.0)]}
>>>
>>> psutil.sensors_fans()
{'asus': [sfan(label='cpu_fan', current=3200)]}
>>>
>>> psutil.sensors_battery()
sbattery(percent=93, secsleft=16628, power_plugged=False)
>>>

Other system info

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.users()
[suser(name='giampaolo', terminal='pts/2', host='localhost', started=1340737536.0, pid=1352),
 suser(name='giampaolo', terminal='pts/3', host='localhost', started=1340737792.0, pid=1788)]
>>>
>>> psutil.boot_time()
1365519115.0
>>>

Process management

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.pids()
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 46, 48, 50, 51, 178, 182, 222, 223, 224, 268, 1215, 1216, 1220, 1221, 1243, 1244,
 1301, 1601, 2237, 2355, 2637, 2774, 3932, 4176, 4177, 4185, 4187, 4189, 4225, 4243, 4245, 4263, 4282,
 4306, 4311, 4312, 4313, 4314, 4337, 4339, 4357, 4358, 4363, 4383, 4395, 4408, 4433, 4443, 4445, 4446,
 5167, 5234, 5235, 5252, 5318, 5424, 5644, 6987, 7054, 7055, 7071]
>>>
>>> p = psutil.Process(7055)
>>> p.name()
'python'
>>> p.exe()
'/usr/bin/python'
>>> p.cwd()
'/home/giampaolo'
>>> p.cmdline()
['/usr/bin/python', 'main.py']
>>>
>>> p.pid
7055
>>> p.ppid()
7054
>>> p.parent()
<psutil.Process(pid=7054, name='bash') at 140008329539408>
>>> p.children()
[<psutil.Process(pid=8031, name='python') at 14020832451977>,
 <psutil.Process(pid=8044, name='python') at 19229444921932>]
>>>
>>> p.status()
'running'
>>> p.username()
'giampaolo'
>>> p.create_time()
1267551141.5019531
>>> p.terminal()
'/dev/pts/0'
>>>
>>> p.uids()
puids(real=1000, effective=1000, saved=1000)
>>> p.gids()
pgids(real=1000, effective=1000, saved=1000)
>>>
>>> p.cpu_times()
pcputimes(user=1.02, system=0.31, children_user=0.32, children_system=0.1)
>>> p.cpu_percent(interval=1.0)
12.1
>>> p.cpu_affinity()
[0, 1, 2, 3]
>>> p.cpu_affinity([0, 1])  # set
>>> p.cpu_num()
1
>>>
>>> p.memory_info()
pmem(rss=10915840, vms=67608576, shared=3313664, text=2310144, lib=0, data=7262208, dirty=0)
>>> p.memory_full_info()  # "real" USS memory usage (Linux, macOS, Win only)
pfullmem(rss=10199040, vms=52133888, shared=3887104, text=2867200, lib=0, data=5967872, dirty=0, uss=6545408, pss=6872064, swap=0)
>>> p.memory_percent()
0.7823
>>> p.memory_maps()
[pmmap_grouped(path='/lib/x8664-linux-gnu/libutil-2.15.so', rss=32768, size=2125824, pss=32768, shared_clean=0, shared_dirty=0, private_clean=20480, private_dirty=12288, referenced=32768, anonymous=12288, swap=0),
 pmmap_grouped(path='/lib/x8664-linux-gnu/libc-2.15.so', rss=3821568, size=3842048, pss=3821568, shared_clean=0, shared_dirty=0, private_clean=0, private_dirty=3821568, referenced=3575808, anonymous=3821568, swap=0),
 pmmap_grouped(path='/lib/x8664-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.0.1', rss=34124, rss=32768, size=2134016, pss=15360, shared_clean=24576, shared_dirty=0, private_clean=0, private_dirty=8192, referenced=24576, anonymous=8192, swap=0),
 pmmap_grouped(path='[heap]',  rss=32768, size=139264, pss=32768, shared_clean=0, shared_dirty=0, private_clean=0, private_dirty=32768, referenced=32768, anonymous=32768, swap=0),
 pmmap_grouped(path='[stack]', rss=2465792, size=2494464, pss=2465792, shared_clean=0, shared_dirty=0, private_clean=0, private_dirty=2465792, referenced=2277376, anonymous=2465792, swap=0),
 ...]
>>>
>>> p.io_counters()
pio(read_count=478001, write_count=59371, read_bytes=700416, write_bytes=69632, read_chars=456232, write_chars=517543)
>>>
>>> p.open_files()
[popenfile(path='/home/giampaolo/svn/psutil/setup.py', fd=3, position=0, mode='r', flags=32768),
 popenfile(path='/var/log/monitd', fd=4, position=235542, mode='a', flags=33793)]
>>>
>>> p.connections()
[pconn(fd=115, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=48776), raddr=addr(ip='93.186.135.91', port=80), status='ESTABLISHED'),
 pconn(fd=117, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=43761), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.100', port=80), status='CLOSING'),
 pconn(fd=119, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=60759), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.104', port=80), status='ESTABLISHED'),
 pconn(fd=123, family=<AddressFamily.AF_INET: 2>, type=<SocketType.SOCK_STREAM: 1>, laddr=addr(ip='10.0.0.1', port=51314), raddr=addr(ip='72.14.234.83', port=443), status='SYN_SENT')]
>>>
>>> p.num_threads()
4
>>> p.num_fds()
8
>>> p.threads()
[pthread(id=5234, user_time=22.5, system_time=9.2891),
 pthread(id=5235, user_time=0.0, system_time=0.0),
 pthread(id=5236, user_time=0.0, system_time=0.0),
 pthread(id=5237, user_time=0.0707, system_time=1.1)]
>>>
>>> p.num_ctx_switches()
pctxsw(voluntary=78, involuntary=19)
>>>
>>> p.nice()
0
>>> p.nice(10)  # set
>>>
>>> p.ionice(psutil.IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE)  # IO priority (Win and Linux only)
>>> p.ionice()
pionice(ioclass=<IOPriority.IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE: 3>, value=0)
>>>
>>> p.rlimit(psutil.RLIMIT_NOFILE, (5, 5))  # set resource limits (Linux only)
>>> p.rlimit(psutil.RLIMIT_NOFILE)
(5, 5)
>>>
>>> p.environ()
{'LC_PAPER': 'it_IT.UTF-8', 'SHELL': '/bin/bash', 'GREP_OPTIONS': '--color=auto',
'XDG_CONFIG_DIRS': '/etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/usr/share/upstart/xdg:/etc/xdg', 'COLORTERM': 'gnome-terminal',
 ...}
>>>
>>> p.as_dict()
{'status': 'running', 'num_ctx_switches': pctxsw(voluntary=63, involuntary=1), 'pid': 5457, ...}
>>> p.is_running()
True
>>> p.suspend()
>>> p.resume()
>>>
>>> p.terminate()
>>> p.wait(timeout=3)
0
>>>
>>> psutil.test()
USER         PID %CPU %MEM     VSZ     RSS TTY        START    TIME  COMMAND
root           1  0.0  0.0   24584    2240            Jun17   00:00  init
root           2  0.0  0.0       0       0            Jun17   00:00  kthreadd
root           3  0.0  0.0       0       0            Jun17   00:05  ksoftirqd/0
...
giampaolo  31475  0.0  0.0   20760    3024 /dev/pts/0 Jun19   00:00  python2.4
giampaolo  31721  0.0  2.2  773060  181896            00:04   10:30  chrome
root       31763  0.0  0.0       0       0            00:05   00:00  kworker/0:1
>>>

Further process APIs

>>> import psutil
>>> for proc in psutil.process_iter(attrs=['pid', 'name']):
...     print(proc.info)
...
{'pid': 1, 'name': 'systemd'}
{'pid': 2, 'name': 'kthreadd'}
{'pid': 3, 'name': 'ksoftirqd/0'}
...
>>>
>>> psutil.pid_exists(3)
True
>>>
>>> def on_terminate(proc):
...     print("process {} terminated".format(proc))
...
>>> # waits for multiple processes to terminate
>>> gone, alive = psutil.wait_procs(procs_list, timeout=3, callback=on_terminate)
>>>

Popen wrapper:

>>> import psutil
>>> from subprocess import PIPE
>>> p = psutil.Popen(["/usr/bin/python", "-c", "print('hello')"], stdout=PIPE)
>>> p.name()
'python'
>>> p.username()
'giampaolo'
>>> p.communicate()
('hello\n', None)
>>> p.wait(timeout=2)
0
>>>

Windows services

>>> list(psutil.win_service_iter())
[<WindowsService(name='AeLookupSvc', display_name='Application Experience') at 38850096>,
 <WindowsService(name='ALG', display_name='Application Layer Gateway Service') at 38850128>,
 <WindowsService(name='APNMCP', display_name='Ask Update Service') at 38850160>,
 <WindowsService(name='AppIDSvc', display_name='Application Identity') at 38850192>,
 ...]
>>> s = psutil.win_service_get('alg')
>>> s.as_dict()
{'binpath': 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\alg.exe',
 'description': 'Provides support for 3rd party protocol plug-ins for Internet Connection Sharing',
 'display_name': 'Application Layer Gateway Service',
 'name': 'alg',
 'pid': None,
 'start_type': 'manual',
 'status': 'stopped',
 'username': 'NT AUTHORITY\\LocalService'}

Other samples

See doc recipes.

Author

psutil was created and is maintained by Giampaolo Rodola'. A lot of time and effort went into making psutil as it is right now. If you feel psutil is useful to you or your business and want to support its future development please consider donating me (Giampaolo) some money.

Don't want to donate money? Then maybe you could write me a recommendation on Linkedin.

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