NAME

sar - system activity reporter

SYNOPSIS

sar [ -ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ -o  file] t [ n ]

sar [ -ubdycwaqvmpgrkxDSAC ] [ -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 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 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 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 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, %wio, %idle - portion of  time  running  in
     user  mode, running in system mode, idle with some pro-
     cess waiting for block I/O, and otherwise  idle.   When
     used  with  -D, %sys is split into percent of time ser-
     vicing requests from remote machines (%sys remote)  and
     all other system time (%sys local).  If you are using a
     3B2 Computer with a co-processor  the  CPU  utilization
     (default) report will contain the following fields:
     %usr, %sys, %idle, scall/s  -  where  scalls/s  is  the
     number  of  system  calls, of all types, encountered on
     the co-processor per second.

-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.   When  used  with  -D,  buffer  caching  is
     reported for locally-mounted remote resources.

-d   Report activity for each block device, e. g.,  disk  or
     tape  drive,  with  the exception of XDC disks and tape
     drives.  When data is displayed, the device  specifica-
     tion  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  servic-
     ing a transfer request, average number of requests out-
     standing during that time;
     r+w/s, blks/s - number of data  transfers  from  or  to
     device, number of bytes transferred in 512-byte 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.   When  used  with -D, the system
     calls are split into incoming, outgoing,  and  strictly
     local  calls.   No  incoming  or outgoing fork and exec
     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  steal-
     ing daemon.
     %s5ipf - the percentage of  S5  inodes  taken  off  the
     freelist  by  iget  which had reusable pages associated
     with  it.   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 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  Remote  File  Sharing
     servers  on  the  system (lo and hi are the minimum and
     maximum number of servers respectively.)
     request %busy - % of time receive  descriptors  are  on
     the request queue
     request avg lgth - average number of  receive  descrip-
     tors waiting for service when queue is occupied
     server %avail - % 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 Remote File Sharing 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.

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 and tape activity from that period:

sar -d -f temp

FILES

/var/adm/sa/sadd daily data file, where dd are digits representing the day of the month.

SEE ALSO

sag(1G), sar(1M).