VSAR(1) RISC/os Reference Manual VSAR(1)
NAME
vsar - visual system activity reporter
SYNOPSIS
vsar [-ubdycwaqvmprA] [-isec] [-Dnum] [-V] [-S] [-l]
DESCRIPTION
vsar samples cumulative activity counters in the operating
system at intervals of t seconds. The default value of t is
1. The -i option selects records at sec second intervals.
The -D option limits the number of block devices that will
be displayed. For example it is possible that more devices
could be configured into the kernel than are actually
attached to the machine. In order to avoid displaying
information on devices not actually present, this option
should be used. The -V option displays a running average
for any value being monitored. The -S option displays a
single page containing all the options listed below.
The -l option locks the process in memory if possible. In
order for the process to be locked in memory, the effective
user ID of the user must be the super-user and there must be
enough memory available. This option is useful when the
system is heavily loaded and it is not desirable for vsar to
be swapped out.
In a multi-page display typing the keys j, k, n, and p will
cause pagination. The key q will always terminate the pro-
gram.
Subsets of data to be printed are specified by option:
-u Report CPU utilization (the default):
%usr, %sys, %wio, %idl - portion of time running in
user mode, running in system mode, idle with some pro-
cess 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, i. e.,
(1-bread/lread) as a percentage;
pread/s, pwrit/s - transfers via raw (physical) device
mechanism.
-d Report activity for each block device, e. g., disk or
tape drive. When data is displayed, a device specifi-
cation starting with dk (like dkip) 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:
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VSAR(1) RISC/os Reference Manual VSAR(1)
%busy, avque - portion of time device was busy servic-
ing a transfer request, average number of requests out-
standing during that time;
r+w/s, KB/s - number of data transfers from or to dev-
ice, number of K-bytes transferred;
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;
rec/s, xmit/s, modem/s - receive, transmit and modem
interrupt rates.
-c Report system calls:
scall/s - system calls of all types;
read/s, write/s, fork/s, exec/s - specific system
calls;
rd KB/s, wr KB/s - K-bytes of data transferred by read
and write system calls.
-w Report system swapping and switching activity:
swpin/s, swpot/s, Kswpin/s, Kswpot/s - number of
transfers and number of KBytes transferred for swapins
and swapouts (including initial loading of some pro-
grams);
pswtch/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 process, i-node, file tables:
proc-size, inode-size, file-size, lock-size -
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:
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VSAR(1) RISC/os Reference Manual VSAR(1)
vflt/s - address translation page faults (valid page
not in memory);
%demand - % of vflts which required zeroing or filling;
%swap - % of vflts for which page is on swap;
%cache - % of vflts for which page is in page cache;
%pgfil - % of vflts for which page is in a file;
pflt/s - page faults from protection errors (illegal
access to page) or "copy-on-writes";
%cow - % of pflts which are "copy-on-write";
%steal - % of pflts for which we had to steal a page;
pgfil/s - vflt/s satisfied by page-in from file system;
rclm/s - valid pages reclaimed for free list.
-r Report unused main memory and disk space:
free-Kmem - average KBytes of main memory available to
user processes;
free-Kswp - KBytes of disk available for process swap-
ping.
-A Report all data. Equivalent to -udqbwcayvmpr.
SEE ALSO
sag(1G), sar(1).
sar(1M) in the System Administrator's Reference Manual.
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