sar(1) sar(1)
NAME
sar - system activity reporter
SYNOPSIS
sar [option ...] [-o file] [-P [no] [Poption ...]] t [n] Format 1
sar [option ...] [-s time] [-e time] [-i sec] [-f file] [-C]\
[-P [no] [Poption ...]] Format 2
DESCRIPTION
sar samples cumulative activity counters in the operating system at
intervals which you specify. However, the uname information for the
logged system is output before this data. If you name a file on the
command line, the samples are saved in binary format in the specified
file (Format 1). sar can also be used to selectively extract the data
that was recorded in a file during a specified period (Format 2).
Format 1: Reporting system activity
sar [option ...] [-o file] [-P [no] [Poption ...]] t [n]
OPTIONS
No option specified:
sar reports on CPU utilization. The same information is output as
under the -u option.
The following options can be used to specify the subsets of data to be
printed:
-a sar reports on the use of file access system routines.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| iget/s | Number of files located by inode entry |
| | per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| namei/s | Number of file system path searches per |
| | second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| dirbk/s | At the moment this corresponds to |
| | readdir/s in sar -x. In the future: |
| | Number of UFS directory block reads |
| | issued per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-A sar reports all data (equivalent to specifying all the other
options).
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sar(1) sar(1)
-b sar reports on buffer activity.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| bread/s, bwrit/s | Transfers of data per second between |
| | system buffers and disk or other block |
| | devices. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| lread/s, lwrit/s | Accesses to system buffers per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %rcache, %wcache | Cache hit ratios, where: %rcache |
| | 1-bread/lread (as a percentage), %wcache|
| | 1-bwrit/lwrit (as a percentage). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pread/s, pwrit/s | Number of physical transfers per second |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-c sar reports on system calls.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| scall/s | All types of system call per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| sread/s, swrit/s, | Specific system calls per second. |
| fork/s, exec/s | |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| rchar/s, wchar/s | Characters transferred by read() and |
| | write() system calls per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-d sar reports on activity for each block device, e.g. disk or tape
drive, with the exception of XDC disks and tape drives.
On a system which uses look-ahead caching for its disks, the
value of %busy may be over 100%, especially when sequential data
is being read.
The microsecond timer is initialized within five minutes of the
system booting. The effect of this is that disk statistics gen-
erated on the basis of the microsecond timer are either imprecise
or even incorrect within this time period (only relevant for
RM600).
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %busy | Percentage of time device spent servic- |
| | ing a transfer request. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| avque | Average number of requests outstanding |
| | during the monitored period. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| r+w/s | Number of data transfers from or to |
| | device per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| blks/s | Number of 512-byte blocks transferred |
| | per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| avwait | Average time in milliseconds that trans-|
| | fer requests wait idly on queue. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| avserv | Average time in milliseconds for trans- |
| | fer requests to be serviced (which for |
| | disks includes seek, rotational latency |
| | and data transfer times). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-g sar reports on paging activities.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pgout/s | Page-out requests per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| ppgout/s | Pages paged-out per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pgfree/s | Pages per second placed on the free list|
| | by the page stealing daemon. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pgscan/s | Pages per second scanned by the page |
| | stealing daemon. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %ufsipf | Percentage of UFS inodes taken off the |
| | free list by iget which had reusable |
| | pages associated with them. These pages |
| | are flushed and cannot be reclaimed by |
| | processes. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-k sar reports on kernel memory allocation (KMA) activities.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| smlmem, alloc, fail| Information about the memory pool |
| | reserving and allocating space for small|
| | requests (< 256 bytes): the amount of |
| | memory in bytes KMA has for the small |
| | pool, the number of bytes allocated to |
| | satisfy requests for small amounts of |
| | memory, and the number of requests for |
| | small amounts of memory that were not |
| | satisfied. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| lgmem, alloc, fail | Information about the large memory pool |
| | (512 bytes to 4 Kbytes; analogous to the|
| | information for the small memory pool, |
| | see above). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| ovszalloc, fail | Amount of memory allocated for oversize |
| | fail requests (> 4 Kbytes) and the |
| | number of oversize requests which could |
| | not be satisfied. Since oversized memory|
| | is allocated dynamically, there is no |
| | pool for it. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-K sar reports fully on kernel memory allocation (KMA) activities.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| smlmem, alloc, | Information about the memory pool |
| fail, pool | reserving and allocating space for small|
| | requests (< 256 bytes): the amount of |
| | memory in bytes KMA has for the small |
| | pool, the number of bytes allocated to |
| | satisfy requests for small amounts of |
| | memory, the number of requests for small|
| | amounts of memory that were not satis- |
| | fied, and the number of pools in the |
| | category. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| lgmem, alloc, fail,| Information about the memory pool for |
| pool | large amounts of memory (512 bytes to 4 |
| | Kbytes; analogous to smlmem, see |
| | above). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| fstmem, alloc, | Information about the fast memory pool |
| fail, pool | for large amounts of memory (512 bytes |
| | to 4 Kbytes; analogous to smlmem, see |
| | above). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| ovszmem, alloc, | Information about the memory pool (512 |
| fail | bytes to 4 Kbytes) reserving and allo- |
| | cating space for oversize requests (> 4 |
| | Kbytes), and the number of oversize |
| | requests which could not be satisfied. |
| | Since oversized memory is allocated |
| | dynamically, there is no pool for it. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-l sar reports on locks.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| splck/s, kslck/s | Overall number of spin locks and kernel |
| | locks per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| wsplck, wkslck | Waits due to spin locks and kernel |
| | locks. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-m sar reports on message and semaphore activities.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| msg/s | Number of message operations per second.|
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| sema/s | Number of semaphore operations per |
| | second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-p sar reports on paging activities.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| atch/s | Page faults per second satisfied by |
| | reclaiming a page currently in memory |
| | (attaches per second). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pgin/s | Page-in requests per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| ppgin/s | Pages paged-in per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| vflt/s | Address translation page faults per |
| | second (validity faults). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pflt/s | Page faults from protection errors per |
| | second (illegal access to page). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| slock/s | Faults per second caused by software |
| | lock requests requiring physical I/O. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-q sar reports on the average queue length while the queue is occu-
pied and on the percentage of time the queue is occupied.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| runq-sz, %runocc | Run queue of processes which are in |
| | memory and runnable. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| swpq-sz, %swpocc | Swap queue of processes which are |
| | swapped out and runnable. These are no |
| | longer reported. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-r sar reports on unused memory pages and disk blocks.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| freemem | Average number of pages available to |
| | user processes. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| freeswap | Disk blocks available for page swapping.|
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-u sar reports on CPU utilization. This option is set by default.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %usr | Percentage of time running in user mode.|
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %sys | Percentage of time running in system |
| | mode. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %wio | Percentage of time idle with process |
| | waiting for block I/O. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| %idle | Percentage of time idle. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| int/s | Number of interrupts per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| intdef/s | Number of delayed interrupts per second.|
| | |
| | In the current Reliant UNIX version this|
| | value is always 0. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-v sar reports on the status of the process, inode and file tables.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| proc-sz, inod-sz, | Number of entries for each table, |
| file-sz, lock-sz | evaluated once at sampling point. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| ov | Overflows that occur between sampling |
| | points for each table. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
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sar(1) sar(1)
-w sar reports on system swapping and switching activity.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| swpin/s, swpot/s, | Number of transfers and number of 512- |
| pswin/s, pswot/s | byte units transferred for swap-ins and |
| | swap-outs (including initial loading of |
| | some programs). |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| pswch/s | Process switches per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-x sar reports on the number of operations in the UFS file system.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| open/s, | Number of open, create, lookup, readdir,|
| create/s, | getpage, putpage, and other operations |
| lookup/s, | made per second. |
| readdir/s, | |
| getpage/s, | |
| putpage/s, | |
| other/s | |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-y sar reports on terminal device activity.
_________________________________________________________________
| Header | Meaning |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| rawch/s | Input characters per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| canch/s | Input characters processed by canon |
| | (canonical queue) per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| outch/s | Output characters per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| rcvin/s | Receiver hardware interrupts per second.|
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| xmtin/s | Transmitter hardware interrupts per |
| | second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
| mdmin/s | Modem interrupts per second. |
|_____________________|__________________________________________|
-o file
The output of sar is saved in file in binary format.
-P [no] [Poption ...]
-P Output for CPUs on multiprocessor machines.
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sar(1) sar(1)
no no stands for the CPU number. If no is specified, -P only
reports on the CPU with that number.
no not specified:
sar reports the values of the specified Poptions for all
CPUs.
Poption
-P can be combined with options -b, -c, -l, -m, -p, -w and
-y. Descriptions of these options are given above under For-
mat 1.
-P not specified:
sar reports an average value among all CPUs for the speci-
fied options.
t Time (in seconds) for which the activity counters are sampled. t
should be greater than 5, as the activity of sar itself may oth-
erwise affect the sample.
If t is specified with more than one option, the output may be
difficult to read.
n Number of intervals in which activity counters are sampled for t
seconds each.
n not specified:
The default value for n is 1.
Format 2: Displaying system activities recorded in a file
sar [option ...] [-s time] [-e time] [-i sec] [-f file] [-C] [-P [no]
[Poption ...]]
OPTIONS
No option specified:
sar reports on CPU utilization. The same information is output as
under the -u option.
option
See Format 1.
-s time
Starting time for the report, specified in the form:
hh[:mm[:ss]].
-e time
Ending time for the report, specified in the form: hh[:mm[:ss]].
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sar(1) sar(1)
-i sec
Records are selected and reported at intervals of sec seconds.
-i not specified:
All intervals found in the daily activity file are reported.
-f file
Name of the file from which sar extracts data.
-f not specified:
sar reads the standard system daily activity file
/usr/adm/sa/sadd, where dd stands for the current day.
-C (only in conjunction with -f file) If the file was written with
an older sar or sadc command, it can only be read with this
option.
-P [no] [Poption ...]
See Format 1.
EXAMPLES
Example 1
To see today's CPU activity up to the time sar is called:
$ sar
Example 2
To watch system activity evolve for 12 minutes (12 periods of 60
seconds) and record the data in a file named cpuact:
$ sar -o cpuact 60 12
Example 3
To review disk and tape activity from the period recorded in Exam-
ple 2:
$ sar -d -f cpuact
NOTES
1. In the case of systems that support "look-ahead-caching" for their
disks, the value for %busy (-d option) may be greater than 100 if a
lot of data is read sequentially.
2. The -b option is used to report on the file system-specific access
to all system buffers in the system, irrespective of the type of
buffer.
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sar(1) sar(1)
FILES
/usr/adm/sa/sadd
Daily data file for system activities, where dd stands for the
current day.
SEE ALSO
sar(1M).
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