sar(1) User Commands sar(1)NAMEsar - system activity reporter
SYNOPSISsar [-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 specifi‐
cation 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 trans‐
fers from or to device, num‐
ber of bytes transferred in
512-byte units.
avwait average wait time in mil‐
liseconds.
avserv average service time in mil‐
liseconds.
For more general system statistics, use iostat(1M),
sar(1M), or vmstat(1M).
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 steal‐
ing 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 pro‐
cesses. 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 num‐
ber of bytes allocated to sat‐
isfy 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 informa‐
tion 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 mem‐
ory 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 sam‐
pling 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 ini‐
tial 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
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │system/accounting/legacy │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOiostat(1M), sar(1M), vmstat(1M), exec(2), fork(2), attributes(5)
System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration
NOTES
The sum of CPU utilization might vary slightly from 100 because of
rounding errors in the production of a percentage figure.
SunOS 5.11 1 Dec 2009 sar(1)
