Getting the CPU usage in a generic way across OSes

[Kristoffer Erlandsson]

Hello,

I am writing an application that, among other things, should monitor the
CPU usage. However, this seems impossible to do in a platform
independant way. I have browsed the source from some C-programs which do
this and they all seem to depend on very different ways depending on
what OS the program is running on. Many of the ways use system specific
system calls (which I can't find Python functions for). The only
solution I have come up with so far is to extend python with some C-code
which get the CPU usage for me. But this is of course more tedious than
I'd like it to be. So I'm wondering if a module implementing this
allready exists? I've had a date with google for this one, but no luck.
If it doesn't exist, do anyone have a better idea than to write/rip the
C-code implementing this for different OS:es? I'm only interested in
doing it for *nix OS:es.

I'm very grateful for any help on this.

Regards,
Kristoffer Erlandsson