How to Stress Test CPU on Linux Using stress and mpstat

In Linux environments, CPU stress testing evaluates load capacity and stability. Two common commands are stress and mpstat.

stress command

Install:

sudo apt-get install stress

sudo yum install stress

Usage: specify the number of CPU workers with -c <number> and the test duration with -t <time>. stress -c 4 -t 60 The command runs four CPU workers for 60 seconds and produces output such as:

stress: info: [8640] dispatching hogs: 4 cpu, 0 io, 0 vm, 0 hdd
stress: info: [8640] successful run completed in 60s

mpstat command

Install the sysstat package, which provides mpstat:

sudo apt-get install sysstat

sudo yum install sysstat

Usage: -P ALL monitors all CPUs; you can set the interval and count, e.g., mpstat -P ALL 5 3 to report every 5 seconds three times. mpstat -P ALL 5 3 Sample output shows overall and per‑CPU utilization percentages for user, system, iowait, and idle time, allowing analysis of CPU performance and stability.