Shell script for detecting Linux processes consuming extensive amounts of processing power. Intended to be run on schedule.

kill-high-cpu-processes.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# 95% CPU utilisation
threshold=0.95

log_file="/var/log/kill-high-cpu-processes.log"

get_process_info() {
  process_id=$1
  ps -p "$process_id" -o pid,ppid,cmd,%cpu,%mem,stat --no-header | awk '{$1=$1};1'
}

high_cpu_processes=$(ps -eo pid,%cpu --sort=-%cpu | awk -v threshold="$threshold" '$2 > threshold {print $1}')

if [ -z "$high_cpu_processes" ]; then
  exit
fi

# Log timestamp and processes to the file
echo "$(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") - High CPU processes: $high_cpu_processes" >> "$log_file"

# Kill offending processes
for pid in $high_cpu_processes; do
  process_info=$(get_process_info "$pid")
  echo "$(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") - Killing process $process_info..." >> "$log_file"
  kill -9 "$pid"
  echo "$(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") - Process $pid killed." >> "$log_file"
done