[HOWTO] Identify the thread/process consuming a high amount of CPU utilization using PS

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[HOWTO] Identify the thread/process consuming a high amount of CPU utilization using PS

Product:

Auditing and Monitoring Service , Authentication Service , Privileged Access Service , PC Auditing and Monitoring Service ,

Published:

11 January,21 at 07:32 AM

Rating:

In this article we will be walking through the steps to locate what process / thread(s) is consuming a high amount of CPU
using the PS command. All commands being used in this article has been tested in Unix and Linux environments. I will use DirectControl (adclient) as a test in the steps to locate the process / thread showing the amount of CPU utilization. (NOTE: These steps can be used to identify any application/process a customer has reported using a large amount of CPU.)

1.) First locate the process ID for the client/agent or application with the command below:

#ps -ef|grep -i adclient

Output:

The process id for DirectControl (adclient) is (20995). (NOTE: The id could be different in other environments)

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2.) To see all the processes PID's currently running under DirectControl (adclient) run the following command below:

#ps -Lp 20995 -o pid,ppid,pcpu,pmem,lwp

Output:

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We can see that process 21027 (in the example) is consuming high CPU in this demonstration.

NOTE: LWP stands for, "Light weight process"

FYI, To see a single LWP thread consuming high CPU to get the CMD run the command below. (CMD: Shows the command used to launch the process)

#ps -e -q 21027

Output:

3.) To see all LWP related threads consuming high CPU for the process run command below:

#ps -eLf | head -1; ps -eLf | egrep "20995" | grep -v grep

Output:

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