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Is there any way to monitor one process' CPU usage and RAM usage over time on linux? I am trying to change to a cheaper VPS and need to work out what level of CPU and RAM I need!

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Shouldn't you be more interested in maximum memory usage? – Ryan Thompson Nov 15 '10 at 0:49
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read man 5 proc, especially the /proc/[pid]/stat entry and the utime, stime fields. /proc/[pid]/status or /proc/[pid]/statm might be of interest for you as well.

then use cron or whatever means needed to collect 'snapshots' of /proc/[pid]/stat for your process over a period of time. then visualize what you have grabbed.

a simple 'collector' works like this (for a process with the pid '29777'):

% while true; do cat /proc/29777/stat; sleep 1; done

to make life easier, you could also use the systat package which includes several means to collect data over time:

http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-orange.fr/documentation.html

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Sounds an interesting idea, i'll give it a go and update you with the result. – Pez Cuckow Nov 16 '10 at 18:57
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top command should give you all the info you need.

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Top only provides instantaneous snapshots of CPU and memory usage. The OP asks how to collect aggregate statistics over time. – Ryan Thompson Nov 15 '10 at 0:49
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