illumos: manual page: sar.1

SAR(1) User Commands 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, the sar utility 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 can be difficult to read. (If
the sampling interval is less than 5, the activity of sar itself can
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. Otherwise, all intervals found in the data file are
reported.

OPTIONS

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

-a
Reports use of file access system routines: iget/s,
namei/s, dirblk/s

-A
Reports all data. Equivalent to -abcdgkmpqruvwy.

-b
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-c
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-d
Reports 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(8), sar(8),
or vmstat(8).

See System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration
for naming conventions for disks.

-e time
Selects data up to time. Default is 18:00.

-f filename
Uses filename as the data source for sar. Default is the
current daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd.

-g
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-i sec
Selects data at intervals as close as possible to sec
seconds.

-k
Reports 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
Reports message and semaphore activities:

msg/s, sema/s
primitives per second.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-o filename
Saves samples in file, filename, in binary format.

-p
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-q
Reports average queue length while occupied, and percent
of time occupied:

runq-sz, %runocc
Run queue of kernel threads in memory
and runnable

swpq-sz, %swpocc
Swap queue of processes

-r
Reports unused memory pages and disk blocks:

freemem
average pages available to user processes.

freeswap
disk blocks available for page swapping.

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

-u
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-v
Reports 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
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-y
Reports 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.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is
active, these values reflect activity on the processors of
the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

EXAMPLES

Example 1: Viewing System Activity

The following example displays 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

NOTES

The sum of CPU utilization might vary slightly from 100 because of
rounding errors in the production of a percentage figure.

May 13, 2017 SAR(1)