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padeoe/enhanced-nvidia-smi.md

Last active March 3, 2026 13:05
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Show Username & full process command with nvidia-smi
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nvidia-smi-process-name.md

This script is based one nvidia-smi, but it can show complete process names and commands.

nvidia-smi |tr -s ' '|grep -Eo "| [0123] [0-9]{3,} .*"|awk -F' ' '{system("s=$(cat /proc/"$2"/cmdline| tr \"\\0\" \" \");u=$(ps -o uname= -p "$2");echo -e "$1"sep$u sep"$5"sep$s" ) }'|sed -e 's/sep/\t/g'

The output is like this

0	root 	5825MiB python playground2.py
0	root 	6319MiB /opt/conda/bin/python -u /cail/model.py
1 root  137MiB  python playground2.py
1 root  273MiB  /usr/bin/python -u /sentsim/cli_predict.py
1 root  4735MiB /opt/conda/bin/python -u /cail/model.py
1 root  199MiB  /usr/bin/python -u /sentsim/train.py
2 root  137MiB  python playground2.py
2 root  4735MiB /opt/conda/bin/python -u /cail/model.py

As a compare, the output of nvidia-smi is

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0      3296      C   python                                      5825MiB |
|    0     21266      C   /opt/conda/bin/python                       6319MiB |
|    1      3296      C   python                                       137MiB |
|    1      8063      C   /usr/bin/python                              273MiB |
|    1     21266      C   /opt/conda/bin/python                       4735MiB |
|    1     30439      C   /usr/bin/python                              199MiB |
|    2      3296      C   python                                       137MiB |
|    2     21266      C   /opt/conda/bin/python                       4735MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
@savanovich
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savanovich commented Nov 25, 2024

That's extremely helpful, thanks

@awcator
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awcator commented Dec 10, 2024

Awesome. thanks

@huangrt01
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huangrt01 commented Apr 1, 2025

That's extremely helpful, thanks

@Lenzelot
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Lenzelot commented Jun 16, 2025

Thanks so much for the little script @padeoe! I also prefer simpler tools over nvitools though it is cool.

For zsh users, instead of making an alias (which would be a pain because of all the quotes) you can simply make a function.

function nvidia-smi-pro() {
    nvidia-smi && (nvidia-smi |tr -s ' '|grep -Eo "| [0123456789]+ N/A N/A [0-9]{3,} .*"|awk -F' ' '{system("s=$(cat /proc/"$4"/cmdline| tr \"\\0\" \" \");u=$(ps -o uname= -p "$4");echo "$1"sep"$4"sep$u sep"$7"sep$s" ) }'|sed 's/sep/\t/g')
}

@rleiser1995
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rleiser1995 commented Mar 3, 2026

If you are running the command on a MIG setup it won't work. For that, the fixed command is

nvidia-smi && echo -e "\nEnriched Process List:" && nvidia-smi | sed -n '/Processes:/,$p' | grep -E '^\| +[0-9]+' | tr -s ' ' | awk -F' ' '{ pid=$(NF-4); gpu=$2; "ps -o user= -p "pid | getline user; "cat /proc/"pid"/cmdline | tr \"\\0\" \" \"" | getline cmd; printf "GPU %s | PID %s | User %s | Mem %s | Cmd %s\n", gpu, pid, user, $(NF-1), cmd; close("ps -o user= -p "pid); close("cat /proc/"pid"/cmdline | tr \"\\0\" \" \"") }'

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