VMSTAT(8)

NAME
vmstat - report system statistics

SYNOPISIS
vmstat [ interval ]

DESCRIPTION
vmstat is for the BSD types in the audience that are used to a command line based performance monitoring system.

This version is similar to the BSD & SunOS version but adds network statistics. It is called vmstat so that new Linux users can type what their fingers already know and get the same information.

Without a specified interval, vmstat will generate a new line of statistics every 5 seconds. The interval may be specified to override the default of 5 seconds.

EXAMPLE
This is an example of a system generating a heavy NFS client load

tar cfv /dev/null /nfs/slovax/u/lm

load free cache swap pgin pgou dk0 dk1 dk2 dk3 ipkt opkt int   ctx   usr sys idl
0.00  1.2   3.6  7.3    0    0   0   0   0   0  303   76 303   187     0  10  90
0.00  1.2   3.6  7.3    0    0   0   0   0   0  231   80 227   210     0   7  93

Another example, doing the same thing on a local disk:

load free cache swap pgin pgou dk0 dk1 dk2 dk3 ipkt opkt int   ctx   usr sys idl
0.17  0.4   4.5  7.3 1259    0 181   0   0   0    5    5 195   480     4  34  62
0.17  0.4   4.5  7.3 1073    0 207   0   0   0    6    5 219   605     3  33  64

FIELD MEANINGS

load
    1 minute load average.

free
    Free memory in megabytes.

cache
    Memory used for the buffer cache in megabytes (does not include the shared buffers).

swap
    Swap space in use in megabytes.

pgin
    Blocks read in per second in kilobytes.

pgou
    Blocks written out per second in kilobytes.

dk[0-4]
    Disk operations per second (as of 1.1.70, CDROM operations not counted).

ipkt
    Network packets received per second.

opkt
    Network packets sent per second.

int Interrupts per second, not counting the clock interrupt.

ctx Context switches per second.

usr perentage of time spent in user space (user and nice).

sys percentage of time spent in the kernel.

idle
    percentage of time spent in the idle loop.

AUTHOR
Copyright (c) 1995 Larry McVoy, lm@engr.sgi.com
$Id: vmstat.8,v 1.1 1995/02/23 19:22:52 lm Exp $

COPYING
Covered by the GNU General Public License.