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 speci‐
fication 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 trans‐
fer 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: Advanced Administra‐
tion 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 satis‐
fied 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 per‐
cent 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 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
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 pro‐
cessed 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 represent‐
ing the day of the month
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWaccu │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOsag(1), iostat(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 5.10 24 Jul 2004 sar(1)
