NAME

sar − system activity reporter

SYNOPSIS

sar [ -ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ -P  processor-id] [ -o  file] t [ n ]

sar [ -ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ -s  time] [ -e  time] [ -i  sec] [ -f  file]

DESCRIPTION

In the first instance, sar samples cumulative activity counters in the operating system at n intervals of t seconds, where t should be 5 or greater and the default value of n is 1.  (Note that if the sampling interval is less than 5, the activity of sar itself may affect the sample.)  If t is specified with more than one option, all headers are printed together and the output may be difficult to read. 

If the -o option is specified, sar saves the samples in file in binary format. 

When the -P option is specified, sar reports activity that applies only to processor-id specifically; command line options that request information not specific to processor-id are silently ignored.  Options that are effective with -P are -abcgmuwyD.  If the -o option is specified with the -P option, sar saves the processor-specific samples only in file in binary format.  The −P option applies to multi-processing only. 

In the second instance, with no sampling interval specified, sar extracts data from a previously recorded file, either the one specified by the -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 using 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. 

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

-u Report processor utilization (the default):

%usr portion of time running in user modes. 

%sys portion of time running in system mode. 

%wio portion of time idle with some process waiting for block I/O. 

%idle portion of time otherwise idle. 

When used with −D, %sys is split into percentage of time servicing requests from remote machines (%sys remote) and all other system time (%sys local). 

-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 per second of system buffers. 

%rcache, %wcache
cache hit ratios, such as (1−bread/lread) as a percentage. 

pread/s, pwrit/s
transfers per second by means of raw (physical) device mechanism.

When used with -D, buffer caching is reported for locally-mounted remote resources. 

-d Report activity for each block device which provides this support.  The device name is reported for each device.  The activity data reported is:

%busy percentage of time device was busy servicing a transfer request. 

avque average number of requests outstanding during the monitored period. 

r+w/s number of data transfers to or from device per second. 

blks/s number of 512-byte blocks transferred to or from the device per second. 

avwait average time in milliseconds that transfer requests wait idly on queue. 

avserv average time in milliseconds for a transfer request to be completed by the device (for disks includes seek, rotational latency and data transfer times). 

-y Report TTY device activity (per second):

rawch/s input characters. 

canch/s input characters processed by canon. 

outch/s output characters. 

rcvin/s receiver hardware interrupts. 

xmtin/s transmitter hardware interrupts. 

mdmin/s
modem interrupts.

-c Report system calls (per second):

scall/s system calls of all types. 

sread/s, swrit/s, fork/s, exec/s
specific system calls.

rchar/s characters (bytes) transferred by read system calls. 

wchar/s characters (bytes) transferred by write system calls. 

When used with -D, the system calls are split into incoming, outgoing, and strictly local calls.  No incoming or outgoing fork and exec calls are reported. 

-w Report system swapping and switching activity (per second):

swpin/s, swpot/s
number of transfers to and from memory

pswin/s, pswot/s
number of 512-byte blocks transferred for swapins and swapouts (including initial loading of some programs).

pswch/s
process switches.

-a Report use of file access system routines (per second):

iget/s number of S5 and UFS files located by inode entry. 

namei/s number of file system path searches. 

dirblk/s number of S5 and UFS directory block reads issued. 

-q Report average queue length while occupied, and percentage of time occupied:

runq-sz run queue of processes in memory and runnable. 

%runocc
percentage of time run queue is occupied.

swpq-sz, %swpocc
the average number of processes in the swap queue when there were processes in the queue and the percent of time during the sample that there were processes in the swap queue. If there are no processes in the swap queue, these fields are blank.

-v Report status of process, i-node, file and file lock record tables.  The maximum number of files open is reported as inf if it depends only on available memory. 

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. 

-m Report message and semaphore activities:

msg/s, sema/s
primitives per second.

-p Report paging activities:

atch/s page faults per second that are 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. 

pflt/s page faults from protection errors per second (invalid access to page) or “copy-on-writes.”

vflt/s address translation page faults per second (valid page not in memory). 

slock/s faults per second caused by software lock requests requiring physical I/O. 

-g Report paging activities:

pgout/s page-out requests per second. 

ppgout/s
pages paged-out per second.

pgfree/s
pages per second placed on the freelist by the page stealing daemon.

pgscan/s
pages per second scanned by the page stealing daemon.

%s5ipf the percentage of S5 inodes taken off the freelist by iget which had reusable pages associated with it.  These pages are flushed and cannot be reclaimed by processes.  Thus, this is the percentage of igets with page flushes. 

-r Report unused memory pages and disk blocks:

freemem
average pages available to user processes.

freeswap
disk blocks available for page swapping.

-k Report kernel memory allocation (KMA) activities:
Information about the memory pool reserving and allocating space for small requests (less than 256 bytes):

sml_mem
the amount of memory in bytes KMA has for the small pool.

alloc the number of bytes allocated to satisfy requests for small amounts of memory. 

fail the number of requests for small amounts of memory that were not satisfied (failed). 

Information for the large memory pool:

lg_mem, alloc, fail
(analogous to the information for the small memory pool.)

Information for oversized requests (because oversized memory is allocated dynamically, there is not a pool):

ovsz_alloc
the amount of memory allocated for oversize requests.

fail the number of oversize requests that could not be satisfied. 

-x Report remote file sharing (RFS) operations:

open/s the number of open operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing). 

create/s the number of create operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing). 

lookup/s
the number of lookup operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing).

readdir/s
the number of readdir operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing).

getpage/s
the number of getpage operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing).

putpage/s
the number of putpage operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing).

other/s the number of other operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing). 

-D Report Remote File Sharing activity:
When used in combination with −u, −b or −c, it causes sar to produce the remote file sharing version of the corresponding report.  −Du is assumed when only −D is specified. 

-S Report server and request queue status:

serv/lo-hi average number of Remote File Sharing servers on the system (lo and hi are the minimum and maximum number of servers respectively). 

request %busy
percentage of time receive descriptors are on the request queue.

request avg lgth
average number of receive descriptors waiting for service when queue is occupied.

server %avail
percentage of time there are idle servers.

server avg avail
average number of idle servers when idle ones exist.

-A Without the -P option, this is equivalent to -udqbwcayvmpgrkxCSD.  With the -P option, this is equivalent to -ubwcaymgD. 

-C Report Remote File Sharing data caching overhead:

snd-inv/s number of invalidation messages per second sent by your machine as a server. 

snd-msg/s total outgoing RFS messages sent per second. 

rcv-inv/s number of invalidation messages received from the remote server. 

rcv-msg/s total number of incoming RFS messages received per second. 

dis-bread/s number of read messages that would be eligible for caching if caching had not been turned off because of an invalidation message.  (Indicates the penalty incurred because of the invalidation message). 

blk-inv/s number of pages removed from the client cache in response to cache invalidation messages. 

EXAMPLES

To see today’s processor activity so far:

sar

To see the system call activity so far for processor 0:

sar −c −P0

To watch processor 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

SEE ALSO

sadc(1M), sag(1M)

  —  System Performance Analysis Utilities