NAME
vmstat —
report virtual memory
statistics
SYNOPSIS
vmstat |
[-CefHiLlmstUvW]
[-c count]
[-h
hashname]
[-M core]
[-N
system]
[-u
histname]
[-w wait]
[disks] |
DESCRIPTION
vmstat reports certain kernel statistics kept about process,
virtual memory, disk, trap, and CPU activity.
The options are as follows:
-
-
- -C
- Report on kernel memory caches. Combine with the
-m option to see information about memory pools that
back the caches.
-
-
- -c
count
- 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
wait interval is specified, the default is 1
second.
-
-
- -e
- Report the values of system event counters.
-
-
- -f
- Report fork statistics.
-
-
- -H
- Report all hash table statistics.
-
-
- -h
hashname
- Report hash table statistics for
hashname.
-
-
- -i
- Report the values of system interrupt counters.
-
-
- -L
- List all the hashes supported for -h and
-H.
-
-
- -l
- List the UVM histories being maintained by the kernel.
-
-
- -M
core
- Extract values associated with the name list from the
specified core instead of the default /dev/mem.
-
-
- -m
- Report on the usage of kernel dynamic memory listed first
by size of allocation and then by type of usage, followed by a list of the
kernel memory pools and their usage.
-
-
- -N
system
- Extract the name list from the specified system instead of
the default /netbsd.
-
-
- -s
- Display the contents of the
uvmexp
structure. This contains various paging event and memory status
counters.
-
-
- -t
- Display the contents of the
vmtotal
structure. This includes information about processes and virtual memory.
The process part shows the number of processes in the following states:
- ru
- on the run queue
- dw
- in disk I/O wait
- pw
- waiting for paging
- sl
- sleeping
The virtual memory section shows:
- total-v
- Total virtual memory
- active-v
- Active virtual memory in use
- active-r
- Active real memory in use
- vm-sh
- Shared virtual memory
- avm-sh
- Active shared virtual memory
- rm-sh
- Shared real memory
- arm-sh
- Active shared real memory
- free
- Free memory
All memory values are shown in number of pages.
-
-
- -U
- Dump all UVM histories.
-
-
- -u
histname
- Dump the specified UVM history.
-
-
- -v
- Print more verbose information. When used with the
-i, -e, or -m
options prints out all counters, not just those with non-zero values.
-
-
- -W
- Print more verbose information about kernel memory
pools.
-
-
- -w
wait
- Pause wait seconds between each
display. If no repeat count is specified, the
default is infinity. The vmstat command will accept and
honor a negative number of wait seconds.
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.)
-
-
- 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 every five seconds, and given in units per second.
- flt
- total 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 transfers per second. Typically paging will be split
across the available drives. The header of the field is the first
character of the disk name and the unit number. If more than four disk
drives are configured in the system, vmstat displays
only the first four drives. To force vmstat to display
specific drives, their names may be supplied on the command line.
-
-
- 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
- /netbsd
- default kernel namelist
- /dev/mem
- 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.
SEE ALSO
fstat(1),
netstat(1),
nfsstat(1),
ps(1),
systat(1),
iostat(8),
pstat(8),
kernhist(9)
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.
The
-l,
-U, and
-u options
are useful only if the system was compiled with support for UVM history.