What is the “ Unit ” of time returned by psutil.cpu_times()?

Question

Is it seconds? I am trying to match it with the output of top -n 1 | grep Cpu top -n 1 | grep Cpu command, and they look different!

>>> psutil.cpu_times()
scputimes(user=678.99, nice=2.15, system=405.34, idle=414554.14, iowait=12.95, irq=0.0, softirq=2.43, steal=95.2, guest=0.0, guest_nice=0.0)
>>> exit()
[root@Server]# top -n 1 | grep Cpu
%Cpu(s):  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni,100.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

Answer 1

Yes, it's seconds. The reference docs for this are here:

https://psutil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#psutil.cpu_times

Every attribute represents the seconds the CPU has spent in the given mode.

For a description of the top is giving you, refer to this answer:

https://superuser.com/questions/575202/understanding-top-command-in-unix

The values you're seeing from top are percentages, hence they don't align with the values you're seeing from psutil

To be honest, it's not clear what you're trying to achieve here.