UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hey,

I'm in the process of working on a script to identify IO usage on a high IO server I have setup (Debian Etch). My question is how can identify specific processes that are using much of these resources, I can identify the processes using IOTOP, but doing it remotely via script can be a pain since I have to grep and awk through the entire content in real time.

I also can look at the open file handles via:

lsof | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1 -g

But that doesn't give sound enough proof as I'm looking for an abusive user not specifically something that has X amount of file handles open.

Does anyone have to identify specific processes that are either writing or reading excessively?

How about this one :

Code:

lsof | grep 'username' | awk '{print $NF}' | sort | wc -l

or, even use "lsof -u username", do some kind of pattern matching against the third and the fourth column, respectively FD and TYPE and then take actions.