iostat
The iostat command is for getting the CPU and input-output devices' statistics for Linux and Unix systems. For example, $ iostat Linux 3.0.0-14-generic (hostname) Wednesday 06 June 2012 _i686_ (2 CPU) avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 17.38 0.13 3.13 1.63 0.00 77.74 Device: tps kB_read/s kB_wrtn/s kB_read kB_wrtn sda 11.78 111.65 69.79 11663838 …