to the psutil Module:
As computer systems become more advanced, they require increased monitoring to maintain optimal performance. Diving into the depths of the system processes can be an intimidating task that requires a good understanding of computer architecture.
Here comes the need for a powerful tool to handle system profiling and monitoring tasks along with providing insights on task manager functions, CPU usage, memory usage, network usage, and other parameters. The ‘psutil’ module is a Python package that provides an interface to system-level functions.
It offers a wide range of system information retrieval functions, including CPU system processes, memory, disks, network, sensors, windows services, system constants, and more. It provides this information in an efficient, cross-platform, and reliable way.
Installation of psutil Module:
The installation of psutil is a straightforward process. You can get the package through pip installation.
If you are using the package manager, PSUtil is available in most popular distribution packaging systems. We recommend using the pip approach for the most seamless experience.
To install the package via pip, use the following command:
“`python
pip install psutil
“`
Features of the psutil Module:
The ‘psutil’ module offers an extensive range of features for system monitoring and profiling. These features include, but not limited to the ones mentioned below:
– CPU:
* CPU Times: This feature reports the CPU timing information for the system.
* CPU Utilization: This feature reports the percentage of CPU utilization of the system or a specific process. * Logical CPUs: This feature reports logical CPU count and a list of identifiers for each CPU.
* CPU Statistics: This feature retrieves CPU statistics, including CPU usage in percentage. * CPU Frequency: This feature reports the current CPU frequency in MHz.
– Memory:
* Virtual Memory: This feature provides virtual memory usage statistics for a process or the system.
* Swap Memory: This feature provides swap memory usage statistics for a process or the system. * Memory Usage: This feature provides an easy-to-use method for retrieving memory usage statistics for the process.
– Disk:
* Disk Partitions: This feature retrieves disk partitions information, including device, mount point, and file system type. * Disk Usage: This feature reports the disk usage statistics for the system or a specific path.
* Disk I/O: This feature reports disk I/O statistics for the system. – Network:
* Network Interfaces: This feature retrieves network interface information.
* Network Connections: This feature retrieves active network connections, including those owned by a process. * Network I/O: This feature reports network I/O statistics for the system.
– Sensor:
* Fan Speeds: This feature retrieves current fan speeds of the hardware. * Battery Status: This feature retrieves battery information for the system.
* Temperature: This feature retrieves temperature sensors information of the system. * Voltage: This feature reports voltage readings of the hardware.
– Miscellaneous:
* Boot Time: This feature retrieves the system boot time. * Uptime: This feature retrieves the system uptime.
* Users: This feature retrieves information on users currently logged into the system. * Platform Information: This feature retrieves information on the system’s platform.
Retrieving System Information:
Now that we know the capabilities of the ‘psutil’ module let’s dive into some of the pertinent information that we can retrieve using this module:
CPU Information:
The ‘psutil’ module offers several functions for retrieving CPU information. The following are some of the important ones:
– CPU Times: The CPU times statistics provide system-wide CPU timing information in seconds.
This feature has attributes that provide information such as user time, system time, idle time, interrupt time, and more. – CPU Percent: This feature returns the current estimated CPU percentage utilized by either the whole system or a specific process.
– CPU Frequency: This feature reports the current CPU frequency in MHz.
Memory Information:
The ‘psutil’ module provides several functions for retrieving system memory information. The following are some of the important ones:
– Virtual Memory: This feature retrieves system-wide virtual memory information.
It includes information such as total virtual memory size, available memory, used memory, and more. – Swap Memory: The ‘psutil’ module provides functionality to retrieve the system-wide swap memory statistics.
– Memory Percent: It returns the current estimated memory utilized by either the whole system or a specific process. Disk Information:
Disk-related information retrieval is one of the components that the ‘psutil’ module excels at.
The following are some of the important ones:
– Disk Partitions: This feature retrieves disk partition information of the system. This information includes device name, mount point, and file system type.
– Disk Usage: This feature reports the disk usage statistics for the system or a specific path, including total disk space, used disk space, and free disk space. – Disk I/O Counters: This feature is utilized to retrieve disk I/O statistics of the system.
Network Information:
The ‘psutil’ module has rich functionality for retrieving various network-related information. The following are some of the important ones:
– Network Interfaces: Retrieves information on all the active network interfaces on the system.
– Network I/O Stats: This feature reports network I/O statistics for the system. – Network Connections: This feature retrieves active network connections, including those owned by a process.
Sensor Information:
Sensors are ubiquitous in today’s world of computing. The ‘psutil’ module provides functionality for monitoring various hardware sensors.
The following are some of the important ones:
– Fan Speeds: This feature retrieves current fan speeds of the hardware. – Battery Status: This feature retrieves battery information for the system.
– Temperature: This feature retrieves temperature sensors information of the system. – Voltage: This feature reports voltage readings of the hardware.
Miscellaneous Functions:
There are a variety of other functions that the ‘psutil’ module offers to retrieve various system information. The following are some of the important ones:
– Boot Time: This feature retrieves the system boot time.
– Uptime: This feature retrieves the system uptime. – Users: This feature retrieves information on users currently logged into the system.
– Platform Information: This feature retrieves information on the system’s platform. Conclusion:
Python has come a long way since its inception and offers a vast range of modules and libraries to make the developer’s life easier.
The ‘psutil’ module is one such module that offers a bundle of features while requiring minimal installation and providing cross-platform functionality. The ‘psutil’ module has rich system information retrieval functionality, enabling developers to profile or monitor system performance with ease.
Managing System Processes:
Process management is one of the essential aspects of system monitoring and profiling. The ‘psutil’ module offers an easy-to-use interface for retrieving and manipulating various process-related information.
Retrieving Process Information:
The ‘psutil’ module provides a Process class that models an OS process. It provides several attributes and functions that make retrieving process information straightforward.
Process ID: Each running process is assigned a unique ID from the OS. The ‘psutil’ module provides a function to iterate over the running processes and retrieve all the process IDs.
Existence Check: The ‘psutil’ module also provides a function that checks if a process with a given PID exists or not.
Process Class:
The Process class provided by the ‘psutil’ module enables process manipulation functionality, such as terminating a process, getting the process status, and retrieving process resource usage statistics. Process Attributes: The Process class has several attributes that provide information like process ID, parent process ID, process creation time, and more.
Process Termination: The Process class provides a function that terminates a running process. It takes optional inputs for callback functions and timeout limits.
Process Wait: The wait() method blocks until the process finishes execution. It also takes an optional timeout parameter to limit the waiting time.
Exception Handling:
Process manipulation tasks come with the risk of exceptions. If the process with the given PID does not exist, an exception is raised.
The ‘psutil’ module provides a ProcessLookupError exception that can be caught to handle this. Windows Services:
The ‘psutil’ module also provides WindowsService class that enables service manipulation functionality.
It provides the ability to iterate over all the Windows services, retrieve specific services by name or display information about a single service. Unique Service Name: Each Windows service has a unique name in the system.
The WindowsService class provides functionality to iterate over all the Windows services and retrieve the service name. Service Iteration: The ‘psutil’ module provides a function to iterate over all the Windows services running on a system.
Service Retrieval: The WindowsService class provides a function to retrieve a specific service by name. It returns a WindowsService object that can be used to retrieve information about the service.
Conclusion:
The ‘psutil’ module is a powerful tool for system monitoring and profiling that implements interfaces for retrieving various system information, managing system processes, and Windows services. It leverages Python’s clear and concise syntax to provide a user-friendly interface for developers to monitor system performance and behavior.
The ‘psutil’ module provides a reliable and performance-efficient experience by offering cross-platform functionality while requiring a minimal installation process. Utilizing the ‘psutil’ module in your Python applications can save an immense amount of time and provide rich system information insight.
System Constants:
The ‘psutil’ module offers functionality to retrieve various system constants, including operating system (OS) type and version. This information can be helpful in developing cross-platform applications.
Operating System Verification:
The ‘psutil’ module provides a function called ‘platform’ that returns the currently executing operating system. It returns a string indicating the OS type such as LINUX, WINDOWS, MACOS, BSD, and more.
This function can be used primarily during the process of writing platform-specific code. For example, you might need to adjust aspects of your code to work correctly when run on Windows or Mac.
The ‘psutil’ module provides a handy way to handle these scenarios. The operating system verification functionality is especially helpful when writing software that runs on multiple platforms to ensure that the application does not execute code that is unusable on a specific platform.
Usage Example:
“`python
import platform
import psutil
os_type = platform.system()
if os_type == ‘Windows’:
print(“Running on Windows.”)
elif os_type == ‘Linux’:
print(“Running on Linux.”)
elif os_type == ‘Darwin’:
print(“Running on Mac OS X.”)
print(‘CPU Count:’, psutil.cpu_count())
“`
The above code snippet shows the usage of the ‘platform.system()’ function and the ‘psutil’ module’s ‘cpu_count()’ method to retrieve the number of available CPUs in the system. Conclusion:
The ‘psutil’ module provides a clear and concise way to retrieve various system constants, including the operating system type.
Utilizing this functionality lets developers write cross-platform applications smoothly, ensuring that their code runs correctly on every system. By leveraging the power of Python, the ‘psutil’ module provides functionality that eases the development process and empowers developers to monitor system performance to effectively optimize their applications.
In conclusion, the ‘psutil’ module is a powerful Python package that offers functionality for retrieving system information, managing system processes, and working with Windows services. With its easy-to-use interface and cross-platform functionality, it provides developers insights into the system’s performance, enabling optimization and debugging.
Additionally, the module offers functionality for handling system constants such as operating system type, an important detail for writing platform-specific code. The psutil module is a valuable asset for developers, and its utilization can vastly simplify the development process while providing powerful insights into a system’s operation.