sar(1)
NAME
sar - system activity reporter
SYNOPSIS
sar [-aAbcdgkmpqruvwy] [-o filename] t [n]
sar [-aAbcdgkmpqruvwy] [-e time] [-f filename] [-i sec] [-
s time]
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
affect the sample.) If the -o option is specified, it saves
the samples in filename 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 filename,
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 -e and
-s arguments with time specified in the form hh[:mm[:ss]].
The -i option selects records at sec second intervals. Oth-
erwise, all intervals found in the data file are reported.
OPTIONS
The following options modify the subsets of information
reported by sar.
-a Report use of file access system routines: iget/s,
namei/s, dirblk/s
-A Report all data. Equivalent to -abcdgkmpqruvwy.
-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.
-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. No incoming or outgoing exec(2) and
fork(2) calls are reported.
-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.
avwait
average wait time in milliseconds.
avserv
average service time in milliseconds.
For more general system statistics, use iostat(1M), sar(1M),
or vmstat(1M).
See System Administration Guide: Basic Administration for
naming conventions for disks.
-e time
Select data up to time. Default is 18:00.
-f filename
Use filename as the data source for sar. Default is
the current daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd.
-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 asso-
ciated with them. These pages are flushed and
cannot be reclaimed by processes. Thus, this is
the percentage of igets with page flushes.
-i sec
Select data at intervals as close as possible to sec
seconds.
-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).
-m Report message and semaphore activities:
msg/s, sema/s
primitives per second.
-o filename
Save samples in file, filename, in binary format.
-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.
-q Report average queue length while occupied, and per-
cent of time occupied:
runq-sz, %runocc
run queue of processes in memory and runnable.
swpq-sz, %swpocc
these are no longer reported by sar.
-r Report unused memory pages and disk blocks:
freemem
average pages available to user processes.
freeswap
disk blocks available for page swapping.
-s time
Select data later than time in the form hh[:mm].
Default is 08:00.
-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.
-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.
-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.
-y Report TTY device activity:
rawch/s, canch/s, outch/s
input character rate, input character rate pro-
cessed by canon, output character rate.
rcvin/s, xmtin/s, mdmin/s
receive, transmit and modem interrupt rates.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Viewing system activity
To see today's CPU activity so far:
example% sar
Example 2: Watching system activity evolve
To watch CPU activity evolve for 10 minutes and save data:
example% sar -o temp 60 10
Example 3: Reviewing disk and tape activity
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
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWaccu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
sag(1), iostat(1M), sar(1M), vmstat(1M), exec(2), fork(2),
attributes(5)
System Administration Guide: Basic Administration
NOTES
The sum of CPU utilization might vary slightly from 100
because of rounding errors in the production of a percentage
figure.
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