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vmstat– report virtual memory statistics

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.

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

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 This option is obsolete, and no longer meaningful.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 processor 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. interval 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
‸Cexample%

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.

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 Last Revised 20 Dec 2004

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Last modified: March 15, 2008

vmstat– report virtual memory statistics

OPTIONS

OPERANDS

EXAMPLES

Example 1 Using vmstat

ATTRIBUTES

SEE ALSO

NOTES

Example 1 Using `vmstat`