SAR(1) — Silicon Graphics

NAME

sar − system activity reporter

SYNOPSIS

sar [−ubdycwaqvmA] [−o file] t [ n ]

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

DESCRIPTION

Sar, in the first instance, samples cumulative activity counters in the operating system at n intervals of t seconds. 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 /usr/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.

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, e.g., 1 − bread/lread;
pread/s, pwrit/s − transfers via raw (physical) device mechanism.

−d Report activity for each block device, e.g., disk or tape drive:
%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 (including initial loading of some programs) and swapouts;
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 text, process, inode and file tables:
text-sz, proc-sz, inod-sz, file-sz − entries/size for each table, evaluated once at sampling point;
text-ov, proc-ov, inod-ov, file-ov − overflows occurring between sampling points.

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

−A Report all data. Equivalent to −udqbwcayvm.

EXAMPLE

sar

shows today’s CPU activity so far.

sar −o temp 60 10

watches CPU activity evolve for 10 minutes and saves data.

sar −d −f temp

later reviews disk and tape activity from that period.

FILES

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

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