The
utility reports certain kernel statistics kept about process, virtual memory,
disk, trap and cpu activity.
If the
-M
option is not specified, information is obtained from
the currently running kernel via the
sysctl(3)
interface.
Otherwise, information is read from the specified core file,
using the name list from the specified kernel image (or from
the default image).
The options are as follows:
-a
When used with
-i
include statistics about interrupts that have never been generated.
-c
Repeat the display
count
times.
The first display is for the time since a reboot and each subsequent
report is for the time period since the last display.
If no repeat
count
is specified, and
-w
is specified, the default is infinity, otherwise the default is one.
-f
Report on the number
fork(2),
vfork(2)
and
rfork(2)
system calls since system startup, and the number of pages of virtual memory
involved in each.
-h
Changes memory columns into more easily human readable form. Default if
standard output is a terminal device.
-H
Changes memory columns into straight numbers. Default if standard output
is not a terminal device (such as a script).
-i
Report on the number of interrupts taken by each device since system
startup.
-M
Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
core
-N
If
-M
is also specified,
extract the name list from the specified
system
instead of the default,
which is the kernel image the system has booted from.
-m
Report on the usage of kernel dynamic memory allocated using
malloc(9)
by type.
-n
Change the maximum number of disks to display from the default of 2.
-P
Report per-cpu system/user/idle cpu statistics.
-p
Specify which types of devices to display.
There are three different
categories of devices:
device type:
da
Direct Access devices
sa
Sequential Access devices
printer
Printers
proc
Processor devices
worm
Write Once Read Multiple devices
cd
CD devices
scanner
Scanner devices
optical
Optical Memory devices
changer
Medium Changer devices
comm
Communication devices
array
Storage Array devices
enclosure
Enclosure Services devices
floppy
Floppy devices
interface:
IDE
Integrated Drive Electronics devices
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface devices
other
Any other device interface
passthrough:
pass
Passthrough devices
The user must specify at least one device type, and may specify at most
one device type from each category.
Multiple device types in a single
device type statement must be separated by commas.
Any number of
-p
arguments may be specified on the command line.
All
-p
arguments are ORed together to form a matching expression against which
all devices in the system are compared.
Any device that fully matches
any
-p
argument will be included in the
output, up to two devices, or the maximum number of devices specified
by the user.
-s
Display the contents of the
sum
structure, giving the total number of several kinds of paging related
events which have occurred since system startup.
-w
Pause
wait
seconds between each display.
If no repeat
wait
interval is specified, the default is 1 second.
-z
Report on memory used by the kernel zone allocator,
uma(9),
by zone.
By default,
displays the following information:
procs
Information about the numbers of processes in various states.
r
in run queue
b
blocked for resources (i/o, paging, etc.)
w
runnable or short sleeper (< 20 secs) but swapped
memory
Information about the usage of virtual and real memory.
Virtual pages (reported in units of 1024 bytes) are considered active if
they belong to processes which are running or have run in the last 20
seconds.
avm
active virtual pages
fre
size of the free list
page
Information about page faults and paging activity.
These are averaged each five seconds, and given in units per second.
flt
total number of page faults
re
page reclaims (simulating reference bits)
pi
pages paged in
po
pages paged out
fr
pages freed per second
sr
pages scanned by clock algorithm, per-second
disks
Disk operations per second (this field is system dependent).
Typically paging will be split across the available drives.
The header of the field is the first two characters of the disk name and
the unit number.
If more than two disk drives are configured in the system,
displays only the first two drives, unless the user specifies the
-n
argument to increase the number of drives displayed.
This will probably
cause the display to exceed 80 columns, however.
To force
to display specific drives, their names may be supplied on the command line.
The
utility
defaults to show disks first, and then various other random devices in the
system to add up to two devices, if there are that many devices in the
system.
If devices are specified on the command line, or if a device type
matching pattern is specified (see above),
will only display the given devices or the devices matching the pattern,
and will not randomly select other devices in the system.
faults
Trap/interrupt rate averages per second over last 5 seconds.
in
device interrupts per interval (including clock interrupts)
sy
system calls per interval
cs
cpu context switch rate (switches/interval)
cpu
Breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time.
us
user time for normal and low priority processes
sy
system time
id
cpu idle
FILES
/boot/kernel/kernel
default kernel namelist
/dev/kmem
default memory file
EXAMPLES
The command:
vmstat -w 5
will print what the system is doing every five
seconds; this is a good choice of printing interval since this is how often
some of the statistics are sampled in the system.
Others vary every second and running the output for a while will make it
apparent which are recomputed every second.
The command:
vmstat -p da -p cd -w 1
will tell vmstat to select the first two direct access or CDROM devices
and display statistics on those devices, as well as other systems
statistics every second.
