SAR(1) SAR(1)
NAME
sar - system activity reporter
SYNOPSIS
sar [-ubdycwaqvmprtghIAUTR] [-o file] t [ n ]
sar [-ubdycwaqvmprtghIAUTR] [-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, 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.
In either case, subsets of data to be printed are specified by option:
-u Report CPU utilization (the default):
%usr, %sys, %intr, %wio, %idle, %sbrk - portion of time running in
user mode, running in system mode, processing interrupts, idle with
some process waiting for I/O, completely idle or idle with some
process waiting because system memory is scarce, respectively.
These six percentages add up to 100%. The time that the processor
spent in ``idle waiting for I/O'' state is further broken down into
the following categories:
%wfs - waiting for file system I/O
%wswp - waiting for swap I/O to complete
%wphy - waiting for physio other than swapping
%wgsw - waiting for graphics context switch to complete
%wfif - waiting while graphics pipe too full
These five numbers add up to 100% of the %wio time.
-b Report buffer activity:
bread/s, bwrit/s - basic blocks transferred between system buffers
and disk or other block devices;
lread/s, lwrit/s - basic blocks transferred from system buffers to
user memory;
wcncl/s - pending writes in system buffers cancelled;
%rcach, %wcach - cache hit ratios, that is, (1-bread/lread) as a
percentage;
pread/s, pwrit/s - basic block transfers via raw (physical) device
mechanism.
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-d Report activity for each block device, i.e., disk drives. When data
is displayed, the device specification dsk- is generally used to
represent a disk 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 (basic block) 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);
pswpout/s - process swapouts
pswch/s - process switches.
-g Report graphics activity:
gcxsw/s - graphics context switches per second
ginpt/s - graphics input driver calls per second
gintr/s - graphics interrupts other than FIFO interrupts per second
fintr/s - FIFO too full interrupts per second
swpbf/s - swap buffers calls per second
-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 tables and record lock
tables:
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.
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-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);
dfill/s - address translation fault on demand fill or demand zero
page;
cache/s - address translation fault page reclaimed from page cache;
pgswp/s - address translation fault page reclaimed from swap space;
pgfil/s - address translation fault page reclaimed from file system;
pflt/s - (hardware) protection faults -- including illegal access to
page and writes to (software) writable pages;
cpyw/s - protection fault on shared copy-on-write page;
steal/s - protection fault on unshared writable page;
rclm/s - pages reclaimed by paging daemon.
Dfill, cache, pgswp, and pgfil are subsets of vflt; cpyw and steal
are subsets of pflt.
-t Report translation lookaside buffer (TLB) activities:
tflt/s - user page table or kernel virtual address translation
faults: address translation not resident in TLB;
rflt/s - page reference faults (valid page in memory, but hardware
valid bit disabled to emulate hardware reference bit);
sync/s - TLBs flushes on all processors;
vmwrp/s - syncs caused by clean (with respect to TLB) kernel virtual
memory depletion;
flush/s - single processor TLB flushes;
idwrp/s - flushes because TLB ids have been depleted;
idget/s - new TLB ids issued;
idprg/s - tlb ids purged from process;
vmprg/s - individual TLB entries purged.
-r Report unused memory pages and disk blocks:
freemem - average pages available to user processes;
freeswap - disk blocks available for process swapping;
vswap - virtual pages available to user processes.
-h Report system heap statistics:
heapmem - amount of memory currently allocated to system dynamic
heap;
allocd - memory in system heap allocated to callers;
overhd - system heap block management overhead;
unused - memory in heap available for allocation;
req/s - number of allocation requests per second;
bk/req - number of blocks searched per request;
breq/s - bytes per second requested of heap;
brnd/s - bytes per second request round-up by heap;
bfree/s - bytes per second freed.
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-I Report interrupt statistics:
intr/s - non-vme interrupts per second;
vmeintr/s - vme interrupts per second;
-U Report per-CPU utilization statistics:
Same as -u option except each CPU is shown.
-R Report memory statistics
physmem - physical pages of memory on system;
kernel - pages in use by the kernel;
user - pages in use by user programs;
fsctl - pages in use by file system to control buffers;
fsdelwr - pages in use by file system for delayed-write buffers;
fsdata - pages in use by file system for read-only data buffers;
freedat - pages of free memory that may be reclaimable;
empty - pages of free memory that are empty.
-A Report all data. Equivalent to -udqbwcayvmprtghIUR.
-T Report total counts instead of just percentages or per-second
values. The counts are calculated by taking the difference between
the start and end values in the data file.
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 activity from that period:
sar -d -f temp
To show total disk activity from that period:
sar -T -d -f temp
FILES
/var/adm/sa/sadd
daily data file, where dd are digits representing the day
of the month.
SEE ALSO
gr_osview(1), osview(1), sar(1M)
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