psrecord is a command-line utility for recording the CPU and memory consumption of a running process. It uses the Python psutil library to collect measurements at regular intervals, helping users understand how an application’s resource usage changes over time.
The software is particularly useful when investigating processes that gradually consume more memory, exhibit occasional spikes or behave differently under sustained workloads. Unlike tools that provide only a snapshot of current resource consumption, psrecord can create a record that can be examined after the monitored process has finished.
It can also launch a program and monitor its execution, making it useful for comparing workloads and capturing resource consumption during testing.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Attach to an existing process using its PID or launch a command and monitor it from the beginning.
- Record CPU utilisation together with resident and virtual memory consumption.
- Save measurements as a plain-text log or CSV file for subsequent analysis.
- Generate plots of CPU and memory activity using Matplotlib, including on headless Linux systems.
- Configure the sampling interval and specify a maximum monitoring duration.
- Include child processes in the recorded statistics, allowing workloads that spawn additional processes to be monitored together.
- Optionally collect disk I/O statistics, including read and write operation counts and transferred bytes.
- Display measurements on standard output when neither a log file nor a plot is requested.
Website: github.com/astrofrog/psrecord
Support:
Developer: Thomas P. Robitaille
License: BSD 2-Clause ‘Simplified’ License
psrecord is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Process Memory Tools | |
|---|---|
| ps_mem | Accurately reports memory usage of programs |
| pscircle | Visualizes Linux processes in a form of radial tree |
| psrecord | Record the CPU and memory activity of a process |
| smem2 | Reports on memory usage on Linux systems |
| process-mem | Display memory used by processes |
| process-map | Visualize the virtual memory of a process |
| Smemstat | Reports the physical memory usage |
| mstat | Measure memory usage of a program over time |
| alram | Helps when available memory is below threshold, with optional task killer |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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