time command output on an already running process - linux

Question

I have a process that spawns some other processes,
I want to use the time command on a specific process and get the same output as the time command.
Is that possible and how?

Answer 1

I want to use the time command on a specific process and get the same output as the time command.
Probably it is enough just to use pidstat to get user and sys time:
$ pidstat -p 30122 1 4
Linux 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64 (hostname) 05/15/2014 _x86_64_ (8 CPU)
04:42:28 PM PID %usr %system %guest %CPU CPU Command
04:42:29 PM 30122 706.00 16.00 0.00 722.00 3 has_serverd
04:42:30 PM 30122 714.00 12.00 0.00 726.00 3 has_serverd
04:42:31 PM 30122 714.00 14.00 0.00 728.00 3 has_serverd
04:42:32 PM 30122 708.00 16.00 0.00 724.00 3 has_serverd
Average: 30122 710.50 14.50 0.00 725.00 - has_serverd
If not then according to strace time uses wait4 system call (http://linux.die.net/man/2/wait4) to get information about a process from the kernel. The same info returns getrusage but you cannot call it for an arbitrary process according to its documentation (http://linux.die.net/man/2/getrusage).
So, I do not know any command that will give the same output. However it is feasible to create a bash script that gets PID of the specific process and outputs something like time outpus then
This script does these steps:
1) Get the number of clock ticks per second
getconf CLK_TCK
I assume it is 100 and 1 tick is equal to 10 milliseconds.
2) Then in loop do the same sequence of commands while exists the directory /proc/YOUR-PID:
while [ -e "/proc/YOUR-PID" ];
do
read USER_TIME SYS_TIME REAL_TIME <<< $(cat /proc/PID/stat | awk '{print $14, $15, $22;}')
sleep 0.1
end loop
Some explanation - according to man proc :
user time: ($14) - utime - Amount of time that this process has been scheduled in user mode, measured in clock ticks
sys time: ($15) - stime - Amount of time that this process has been scheduled in kernel mode, measured in clock ticks
starttime ($22) - The time in jiffies the process started after system boot.
3) When the process is finished get finish time
read FINISH_TIME <<< $(cat '/proc/self/stat' | awk '{print $22;}')
And then output:
the real time = ($FINISH_TIME-$REAL_TIME) * 10 - in milliseconds
user time: ($USER_TIME/(getconf CLK_TCK)) * 10 - in milliseconds
sys time: ($SYS_TIME/(getconf CLK_TCK)) * 10 - in milliseconds
I think it should give roughly the same result as time. One possible problem I see is if the process exists for a very short period of time.
This is my implementation of time:
#!/bin/bash
# Uses herestrings
print_res_jeffies()
{
let "TIME_M=$2/60000"
let "TIME_S=($2-$TIME_M*60000)/1000"
let "TIME_MS=$2-$TIME_M*60000-$TIME_S*1000"
printf "%s\t%dm%d.%03dms\n" $1 $TIME_M $TIME_S $TIME_MS
}
print_res_ticks()
{
let "TIME_M=$2/6000"
let "TIME_S=($2-$TIME_M*6000)/100"
let "TIME_MS=($2-$TIME_M*6000-$TIME_S*100)*10"
printf "%s\t%dm%d.%03dms\n" $1 $TIME_M $TIME_S $TIME_MS
}
if [ $(getconf CLK_TCK) != 100 ]; then
exit 1;
fi
if [ $# != 1 ]; then
exit 1;
fi
PROC_DIR="/proc/"$1
if [ ! -e $PROC_DIR ]; then
exit 1
fi
USER_TIME=0
SYS_TIME=0
START_TIME=0
while [ -e $PROC_DIR ]; do
read TMP_USER_TIME TMP_SYS_TIME TMP_START_TIME <<< $(cat $PROC_DIR/stat | awk '{print $14, $15, $22;}')
if [ -e $PROC_DIR ]; then
USER_TIME=$TMP_USER_TIME
SYS_TIME=$TMP_SYS_TIME
START_TIME=$TMP_START_TIME
sleep 0.1
else
break
fi
done
read FINISH_TIME <<< $(cat '/proc/self/stat' | awk '{print $22;}')
let "REAL_TIME=($FINISH_TIME - $START_TIME)*10"
print_res_jeffies 'real' $REAL_TIME
print_res_ticks 'user' $USER_TIME
print_res_ticks 'sys' $SYS_TIME
And this is an example that compares my implementation of time and real time:
>time ./sys_intensive > /dev/null
Alarm clock
real 0m10.004s
user 0m9.883s
sys 0m0.034s
In another terminal window I run my_time.sh and give it PID:
>./my_time.sh `pidof sys_intensive`
real 0m10.010ms
user 0m9.780ms
sys 0m0.030ms