sar(1)

NAME

sar − system activity reporter

SYNOPSIS

sar [ −ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ −o filename ] t [ n ]

sar [ −ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ −s time ] [ −e time ] [ −i sec ] [ −f filename ]

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. If t is specified with more than one option, all headers are printed together and the output may be difficult to read. (If the sampling interval is less than 5, the activity of sar itself may effect the sample.) 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 no sampling interval is 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 arguments with time specified in the form hh[:mm[:ss]]. The −i option selects records at sec second intervals. Otherwise, all intervals found in the data file are reported.

OPTIONS

The following options modify the subsets of information reported by sar.

−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. When used with −D, %sys is split into percent 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 of system buffers;
%rcache, %wcache − cache hit ratios, that is, (1−bread/lread) as a percentage;
pread/s, pwrit/s − transfers using raw (physical) device mechanism. When used with −D, buffer caching is reported for locally-mounted remote resources.

−d Report activity for each block device (for example, disk or tape drive) with the exception of XDC disks and tape drives. When data is displayed, the device specification dsk- is generally used to represent a disk drive. The device specification used to represent a tape drive is machine dependent. 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;
read/s, write/s, blks/s − number of read/write transfers from or to device, number of bytes transferred in 512-byte units;
avseek − number of milliseconds per average seek.

−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. When used with −D, the system calls are split into incoming, outgoing, and strictly local calls. No incoming or outgoing fork(2) and exec(2) calls are reported.

−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 − these are no longer reported by sar.

−v Report status of process, i-node, file 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.

−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 (illegal 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 free list by the page stealing daemon;
pgscan/s − pages per second scanned by the page stealing daemon.
%ufs_ipf − the percentage of UFS inodes taken off the freelist by iget which had reusable pages associated with them. 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:
sml_mem, alloc, fail − information about the memory pool reserving and allocating space for small requests: 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 (failed);
lg_mem, alloc, fail − information for the large memory pool (analogous to the information for the small memory pool);
ovsz_alloc, fail − the amount of memory allocated for oversize requests and the number of oversize requests which could not be satisfied (because oversized memory is allocated dynamically, there is not a pool).

−x Report remote file sharing (RFS) operations:
open/s, create/s, lookup/s, readdir/s, getpage/s, putpage/s, other/s − The number of open, create, lookup, readdir, getpage, putpage, and other operations made per second by clients (incoming) and by the server (outgoing).

−D Report remote file sharing (RFS) 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 RFS servers on the system (lo and hi are the minimum and maximum number of servers respectively.)
request %busy − percent 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 − percent of time there are idle servers
server avg avail − average number of idle servers when idle ones exist

−A Report all data. Equivalent to −udqbwcayvmpgrkxSDC.

−C Report RFS 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.

−o filename Save samples in file, filename, in binary format.

−s time Select data later than time in the form hh[:mm]. Default is 08:00.

−e time Select data up to time. Default is 18:00.

−i sec Select data at intervals as close as possible to sec seconds.

−f filename Use filename as the data source for sar. Default is the current daily data file /usr/adm/sa/sadd.

EXAMPLES

To see today’s CPU activity so far:

example% sar

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

example% sar −o temp 60 10

To later review disk and tape activity from that period:

example% 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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