sar(1)

NAME

sar, vsar − system activity reporter

SYNOPSIS

sar [−ubdycwaqvmprA] [−o file] t [ n ]

sar [−ubdycwaqvmprA] [−s time] [−e time] [−i sec] [−f file]

vsar [−ubycwaqvmprA] [ t [ n ]]

DESCRIPTION

Sar, in the first instance, samples cumulative activity counters in the operating system at n intervals of t seconds, where t should be 5 or greater. If the −o option is specified, it saves the samples in file in binary format. The default value of n is 1.

In the second instance, with no sampling interval specified, sar extracts data from a previously recorded file, either the one specified by −f option or, by default, the standard system activity daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd for the current day dd. The starting and ending times of the report can be bounded via the −s and −e time arguments of the form hh[:mm[:ss]]. The −i option selects records at sec second intervals. Otherwise, all intervals found in the data file are reported.

Vsar is a full-screen version of the first instance of sar. Vsar samples at n intervals of t seconds, where t should be 5 or greater. The default for t is 5 seconds. The default for n is infinite. Vsar does not support the −d option.

In either case, subsets of data to be printed are specified by option:

−u Report CPU utilization (the default):
%usr, %sys, %wio, %idle − portion of time running in user mode, running in system mode, idle with some process waiting for block I/O, and otherwise idle.

−b Report buffer activity:
bread/s, bwrit/s − transfers per second of data between system buffers and disk or other block devices;
lread/s, lwrit/s − accesses of system buffers;
%rcache, %wcache − cache hit ratios, i. e., (1−bread/lread) as a percentage;
pread/s, pwrit/s − transfers via raw (physical) device mechanism.

−d Report activity for each block device, e. g., disk or tape drive. The activity data reported is:
%busy, avque − portion of time device was busy servicing a transfer request, average number of requests outstanding during that time;
r+w/s, blks/s − number of data transfers from or to device, number of bytes transferred in 512-byte units;
avwait, avserv − average time in ms. that transfer requests wait idly on queue, and average time to be serviced (which for disks includes seek, rotational latency and data transfer times).

−y Report TTY device activity:
rawch/s, canch/s, outch/s − input character rate, input character rate processed by canon, output character rate;
rcvin/s, xmtin/s, mdmin/s − receive, transmit and modem interrupt rates.

−c Report system calls:
scall/s − system calls of all types;
sread/s, swrit/s, fork/s, exec/s − specific system calls;
rchar/s, wchar/s − characters transferred by read and write system calls.

−w Report system swapping and switching activity:
swpin/s, swpot/s, bswin/s, bswot/s − number of transfers and number of 512-byte units transferred for swapins and swapouts (including initial loading of some programs);
pswch/s − process switches.

−a Report use of file access system routines:
iget/s, namei/s, dirblk/s.

−q Report average queue length while occupied, and % of time occupied:
runq-sz, %runocc − run queue of processes in memory and runnable;
swpq-sz, %swpocc − swap queue of processes swapped out but ready to run.

−v Report status of process, i-node, file and lock tables:
text-sz, proc-sz, inod-sz, file-sz, lock-sz − entries/size for each table, evaluated once at sampling point;
ov − overflows that occur between sampling points for each table. The values reported for the lock table are 0 for systems with NFS configured. On such systems, file locking is managed by lockd(1M).

−m Report message and semaphore activities:
msg/s, sema/s − primitives per second.

−p Report paging activities:
vflt/s − address translation page faults (valid page not in memory);
pflt/s − page faults from protection errors (illegal access to page) or "copy-on-writes";
pgfil/s − vflt/s satisfied by page-in from file system;
rclm/s − valid pages reclaimed for free list.

−r Report unused memory pages and disk blocks:
freemem − average pages available to user processes;
freeswap − disk blocks available for process swapping.

−A Report all data. Equivalent to −udqbwcayvmpr.

EXAMPLES

To see today’s CPU activity so far:

sar

To watch CPU activity evolve for 10 minutes and save data:

sar −o temp 60 10

To later review disk and tape activity from that period:

sar −d −f temp

FILES

/var/adm/sa/sadd
daily data file, where dd are digits representing the day of the month.

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