#  CPU Steal

CPU steal is the percentage of time that a virtual CPU has to wait for the physical CPU while the hypervisor is fulfilling processes from another virtual CPU. In short, CPU steal occurs when a shared CPU core is delayed in processing a request. This typically occurs when there is resource contention occurring, but that is not always the case.


> My Linode's processes are not performing as expected. What can I do to see if CPU steal is occurring?
> If you're noticing that your Linode's performance is suffering, there is a possibility that CPU steal is occurring. The best starting point to diagnose a potential CPU steal issue is to run the following commands.


```shell
iostat 10 10 && for x in `seq 1 1 30`; do ps -eo state,pid,cmd | grep "^D"; echo "-"; sleep 2; done && top -bn 1 | head -15
```

[explanation](https://www.linode.com/community/questions/18168/what-is-cpu-steal-and-how-does-it-affect-my-linode)

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## Notes

* `iostat` requires the `sysstat` package be installed on the host