DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
VMSTAT(8) DragonFly System Manager's Manual VMSTAT(8)
NAME
vmstat -- report virtual memory statistics
SYNOPSIS
vmstat [-imosuvz] [-c count] [-M core] [-N system] [-w wait] [-n devs]
[-p type,if,pass] [disks]
DESCRIPTION
Vmstat reports certain kernel statistics kept about process, virtual
memory, disk, trap and cpu activity.
The options are as follows:
-b Formatted numbers use a brief format which some may find more
readable with looped output.
-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.
-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 instead of the default /dev/kmem.
-N Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
default /boot/kernel.
-m Report on the usage of kernel dynamic memory listed first by size
of allocation and then by type of usage.
-n Change the maximum number of disks to display from the default of
2.
-o Report the usage of kernel object cache. It only works on the
running system.
-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 vmstat
output, up to three 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.
-u Output unformatted numeric values, suitable for field extraction
and numeric sorting. Columnar output will not be nicely aligned.
-v If specified together with -i, include IRQ numbers and IRQ target
CPU numbers before device names.
-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, by zone. The
information shown is the same as that returned by the vm.zone
sysctl variable.
By default, vmstat 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.
fre Approximate free and easily-freeable memory.
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
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 three disk drives are
configured in the system, vmstat displays only the first three
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 vmstat to display
specific drives, their names may be supplied on the command line.
vmstat defaults to show disks first, and then various other
random devices in the system to add up to three 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), vmstat 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.
int device interrupts per interval (including clock
interrupts)
sys system calls per interval
ctx 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 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 three direct access or CDROM devices
and display statistics on those devices, as well as other systems
statistics every second.
SEE ALSO
fstat(1), netstat(1), nfsstat(1), ps(1), systat(1), iostat(8), pstat(8),
sysctl(8)
The sections starting with ``Interpreting system activity'' in Installing
and Operating 4.3BSD.
BUGS
The -c and -w options are only available with the default output.
DragonFly 5.3 May 30, 2013 DragonFly 5.3