vmstat(1M)                                                System Administration Commands                                                vmstat(1M)

NAME

       vmstat - report virtual memory statistics

SYNOPSIS

       vmstat [-cipqsS] [disks] [ interval [count]]

DESCRIPTION

       vmstat reports virtual memory statistics regarding kernel thread, virtual memory, disk, trap, and CPU activity.

       On MP (multi-processor) systems, vmstat averages the number of CPUs into the output. For per-processor statistics, see mpstat(1M).

       vmstat only supports statistics for certain devices.  For more general system statistics, use sar(1), iostat(1M), or sar(1M).

       Without options, vmstat displays a one-line summary of the virtual memory activity since the system was booted.

       During  execution  of the kernel status command, the state of the system can change. If relevant, a state change message is included in the
       vmstat output, in one of the following forms:

       <<device added: sd0>>
       <<device removed: sd0>>
       <<processors added: 1, 3>>
       <<processors removed: 1, 3>>

       See System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration for device naming conventions for disks.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported:

       -c       Report cache flushing statistics. This option is obsolete, and no longer meaningful.  This option might be  removed  in  a  future
                version of Solaris.

       -i       Report the number of interrupts per device. count and interval does not apply to the -i option.

       -p       Report paging activity in details. This option will display the following, respectively:

                epi      Executable page-ins.

                epo      Executable page-outs.

                epf      Executable page-frees.

                api      Anonymous page-ins.

                apo      Anonymous page-outs.

                apf      Anonymous page-frees.

                fpi      File system page-ins.

                fpo      File system page-outs.

                fpf      File system page-frees.

                When executed in a zone and if the pools facility is active, all of the above only report actitivity on the processors in the pro-
                cessor set of the zone's pool.

       -q       Suppress messages related to state changes.

       -s       Display the total number of various system events since boot. count and interval does not apply to the -s option.

       -S       Report on swapping rather than paging activity. This option will change two fields in vmstat's ``paging'' display: rather than the
                ``re'' and ``mf'' fields, vmstat will report ``si'' (swap-ins) and ``so'' (swap-outs).

OPERANDS

       The following operands are supported:

       count           Specifies the number of times that the statistics are repeated. count does not apply to the -i and -s options.

       disks           Specifies which disks are to be given priority in the output (only four disks fit on a line). Common disk names are id, sd,
                       xd, or xy, followed by a number (for example, sd2, xd0, and so forth).

       interval        Specifies the last number of seconds over which vmstat summarizes activity. This number of seconds repeats forever.  inter-
                       val does not apply to the -i and -s options.

EXAMPLES

       Example 1: Using vmstat

       The following command displays a summary of what the system is doing every five seconds.

       example% vmstat 5
       kthr   memory          page             disk      faults        cpu
       r b w swap  free re mf pi p fr de sr s0 s1 s2 s3  in  sy  cs us sy id
       0 0 0 11456 4120 1  41 19 1  3  0  2  0  4  0  0  48 112 130  4 14 82
       0 0 1 10132 4280 0   4 44 0  0  0  0  0 23  0  0 211 230 144  3 35 62
       0 0 1 10132 4616 0   0 20 0  0  0  0  0 19  0  0 150 172 146  3 33 64
       0 0 1 10132 5292 0   0  9 0  0  0  0  0 21  0  0 165 105 130  1 21 78
       1 1 1 10132 5496 0   0  5 0  0  0  0  0 23  0  0 183  92 134  1 20 79
       1 0 1 10132 5564 0   0 25 0  0  0  0  0 18  0  0 131 231 116  4 34 62
       1 0 1 10124 5412 0   0 37 0  0  0  0  0 22  0  0 166 179 118  1 33 67
       1 0 1 10124 5236 0   0 24 0  0  0  0  0 14  0  0 109 243 113  4 56 39
       ^C
       example%

       The fields of vmstat's display are

       kthr            Report the number of kernel threads in each of the three following states:

                       r        the number of kernel threads in run queue

                       b        the number of blocked kernel threads that are waiting for resources I/O, paging, and so forth

                       w        the number of swapped out lightweight processes (LWPs) that are waiting for processing resources to finish.

       memory          Report on usage of virtual and real memory.

                       swap     available swap space (Kbytes)

                       free     size of the free list (Kbytes)

       page            Report  information  about page faults and paging activity. The information on each of the following activities is given in
                       units per second.

                       re       page reclaims -- but see the -S option for how this field is modified.

                       mf       minor faults -- but see the -S option for how this field is modified.

                       pi       kilobytes paged in

                       po       kilobytes paged out

                       fr       kilobytes freed

                       de       anticipated short-term memory shortfall (Kbytes)

                       sr       pages scanned by clock algorithm

                       When executed in a zone and if the pools facility is active, all of the above (except for "de") only report activity on the
                       processors in the processor set of the zone's pool.

       disk            Report  the  number  of  disk operations per second. There are slots for up to four disks, labeled with a single letter and
                       number. The letter indicates the type of disk (s = SCSI, i = IPI, and so forth); the number is the logical unit number.

       faults          Report the trap/interrupt rates (per second).

                       in       interrupts

                       sy       system calls

                       cs       CPU context switches

                       When executed in a zone and if the pools facility is active, all of the above only report actitivity on the  processors  in
                       the processor set of the zone's pool.

       cpu             Give a breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time. On MP systems, this is an average across all processors.

                       us       user time

                       sy       system time

                       id       idle time

                       When  executed  in a zone and if the pools facility is active, all of the above only report actitivity on the processors in
                       the processor set of the zone's pool.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWcsu                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability          |See below.                   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

       Invocation is evolving. Human readable output is unstable.

SEE ALSO

       sar(1), iostat(1M), mpstat(1M), sar(1M), attributes(5)

       System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

       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.

       The -c option (Report cache flushing statistics) is not supported in this release.

SunOS 5.10                                                          20 Dec 2004                                                         vmstat(1M)