VMSTAT

Section: Linux Administrator's Manual (8)
Updated: 2009 Jan 9
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

vmstat - Report virtual memory statistics  

SYNOPSIS

vmstat [-a] [-n] [delay [ count]]
vmstat [-f] [-s] [-m]
vmstat [-S unit]
vmstat [-d]
vmstat [-D]
vmstat [-p disk partition]
vmstat [-V]  

DESCRIPTION

vmstat reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, disks and cpu activity.

The first report produced gives averages since the last reboot. Additional reports give information on a sampling period of length delay. The process and memory reports are instantaneous in either case.

 

Options

The -a switch displays active/inactive memory, given a 2.5.41 kernel or better.

The -f switch displays the number of forks since boot. This includes the fork, vfork, and clone system calls, and is equivalent to the total number of tasks created. Each process is represented by one or more tasks, depending on thread usage. This display does not repeat.

The -m displays slabinfo.

The -n switch causes the header to be displayed only once rather than periodically.

The -s switch displays a table of various event counters and memory statistics. This display does not repeat.

delay is the delay between updates in seconds. If no delay is specified, only one report is printed with the average values since boot.

count is the number of updates. If no count is specified and delay is defined, count defaults to infinity.

The -d reports disk statistics (2.5.70 or above required)

The -D reports some summary statistics about disk activity.

The -p followed by some partition name for detailed statistics (2.5.70 or above required)

The -S followed by k or K or m or M switches changes the units of ouput from bytes to outputs between 1000, 1024, 1000000, or 1048576 bytes. Note this does not change the swap (si/so) or block (bi/bo) fields.

The -V switch results in displaying version information.

 

FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR VM MODE

 

Procs

r: The number of processes waiting for run time.  
b: The number of processes in uninterruptible sleep.

 

Memory

swpd: the amount of virtual memory used.
free: the amount of idle memory.
buff: the amount of memory used as buffers.
cache: the amount of memory used as cache.
inact: the amount of inactive memory. (-a option)
active: the amount of active memory. (-a option)

 

Swap

si: Amount of memory swapped in from disk (/s).
so: Amount of memory swapped to disk (/s).

 

IO

bi: Blocks received from a block device (blocks/s).
bo: Blocks sent to a block device (blocks/s).

 

System

in: The number of interrupts per second, including the clock.
cs: The number of context switches per second.

These are percentages of total CPU time.
us: Time spent running non-kernel code. (user time, including nice time)
sy: Time spent running kernel code. (system time)
id: Time spent idle. Prior to Linux 2.5.41, this includes IO-wait time.
wa: Time spent waiting for IO. Prior to Linux 2.5.41, included in idle.
st: Time stolen from a virtual machine. Prior to Linux 2.6.11, unknown.


 

FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR DISK MODE

 

Reads

total: Total reads completed successfully 
merged: grouped reads (resulting in one I/O)
sectors: Sectors read successfully
ms: milliseconds spent reading

 

Writes

total: Total writes completed successfully
merged: grouped writes (resulting in one I/O)
sectors: Sectors written successfully
ms: milliseconds spent writing

 

IO

cur: I/O in progress
s: seconds spent for I/O

 

FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR DISK PARTITION MODE

reads: Total number of reads issued to this partition
read sectors: Total read sectors for partition
writes : Total number of writes issued to this partition
requested writes: Total number of write requests made for partition

 

FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR SLAB MODE

cache: Cache name
num: Number of currently active objects
total: Total number of available objects
size: Size of each object
pages: Number of pages with at least one active object

 

NOTES

vmstat does not require special permissions.

These reports are intended to help identify system bottlenecks. Linux vmstat does not count itself as a running process.

All linux blocks are currently 1024 bytes. Old kernels may report blocks as 512 bytes, 2048 bytes, or 4096 bytes.

Since procps 3.1.9, vmstat lets you choose units (k, K, m, M) default is K (1024 bytes) in the default mode

vmstat uses slabinfo 1.1 FIXME  

FILES

/proc/meminfo
/proc/stat
/proc/*/stat

 

SEE ALSO

iostat(1), sar(1), mpstat(1), ps(1), top(1), free(1)

 

BUGS

Does not tabulate the block io per device or count the number of system calls.  

AUTHORS

Written by Henry Ware <al172@yfn.ysu.edu>. 
Fabian Frédérick <ffrederick@users.sourceforge.net> (diskstat, slab, partitions...)


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
Options
FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR VM MODE
Procs
Memory
Swap
IO
System
CPU
FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR DISK MODE
Reads
Writes
IO
FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR DISK PARTITION MODE
FIELD DESCRIPTION FOR SLAB MODE
NOTES
FILES
SEE ALSO
BUGS
AUTHORS

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Time: 19:49:33 GMT, April 27, 2011