On Mon, 04 Nov 2013 17:49:25 +0000, Vince Coen wrote:

There has to be suitable tools for dealing with these issues under Linux
without me having to run a JCL tool (al la IBM) on the boxes.

Gkrellum will give you real times loads on all cores plus other system
info. There are cpu frequency panel applets to show the frequency of each
core in real time. If you just want snapshot data, there are many CL
options for that. cat /proc/cpuinfo will give you info on all cores.
cpufreq-aperf cpufreq-info cpufreq-selector cpufreq-set are CL
tools for users for various actions. To find all commnds available to you
type each letter ay CL and then hit the Tab key. Root will have more than
user.
[wes@mythtv ~]$ c
Display all 159 possibilities? (y or n)