SYSTAT(1) BSD General Commands Manual SYSTAT(1)NAMEsystat — display system statistics on a crt
SYNOPSISsystat [-display] [refresh-interval]
DESCRIPTION
The systat utility displays various system statistics in a screen ori‐
ented fashion using the curses screen display library, ncurses(3).
While systat is running the screen is usually divided into two windows
(an exception is the vmstat and pvmmeter displays which uses the entire
screen). The upper window depicts the current system load average. The
information displayed in the lower window may vary, depending on user
commands. The last line on the screen is reserved for user input and
error messages.
By default systat displays the processes getting the largest percentage
of the processor in the lower window. Other displays show swap space
usage, disk I/O statistics (a la iostat(8)), virtual memory statistics (a
la vmstat(8)), network ``mbuf'' utilization, TCP/IP statistics, and net‐
work connections (a la netstat(1)).
Input is interpreted at two different levels. A ``global'' command
interpreter processes all keyboard input. If this command interpreter
fails to recognize a command, the input line is passed to a per-display
command interpreter. This allows each display to have certain display-
specific commands.
Command line options:
-display The - flag expects display to be one of: icmp, icmp6,
ifstat, iostat, ip, ip6, mbufs, netstat, pigs,
pvmmeter, sensors, swap, tcp, or vmstat. These dis‐
plays can also be requested interactively (without the
“-”) and are described in full detail below.
refresh-interval The refresh-value specifies the screen refresh time
interval in seconds.
Certain characters cause immediate action by systat. These are
^L Refresh the screen.
^G Print the name of the current ``display'' being shown in the
lower window and the refresh interval.
: Move the cursor to the command line and interpret the input
line typed as a command. While entering a command the cur‐
rent character erase, word erase, and line kill characters
may be used.
The following commands are interpreted by the ``global'' command inter‐
preter.
help Print the names of the available displays on the command
line.
load Print the load average over the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes on
the command line.
stop Stop refreshing the screen.
[start] [number]
Start (continue) refreshing the screen. If a second,
numeric, argument is provided it is interpreted as a refresh
interval (in seconds). Supplying only a number will set the
refresh interval to this value.
quit Exit systat. (This may be abbreviated to q.)
The available displays are:
pigs Display, in the lower window, those processes resident in
main memory and getting the largest portion of the processor
(the default display). When less than 100% of the processor
is scheduled to user processes, the remaining time is
accounted to the ``idle'' process.
icmp Display, in the lower window, statistics about messages
received and transmitted by the Internet Control Message Pro‐
tocol (“ICMP”). The left half of the screen displays infor‐
mation about received packets, and the right half displays
information regarding transmitted packets.
The icmp display understands two commands: mode and reset.
The mode command is used to select one of four display modes,
given as its argument:
rate Show the rate of change of each value in packets
per second (the default).
delta Show the rate of change of each value in packets
per refresh interval.
since Show the total change of each value since the
display was last reset.
absolute Show the absolute value of each statistic.
The reset command resets the baseline for since mode. The
mode command with no argument will display the current mode
in the command line.
icmp6 This display is like the icmp display, but displays statis‐
tics for IPv6 ICMP.
ip Otherwise identical to the icmp display, except that it dis‐
plays IP and UDP statistics.
ip6 Like the ip display, except that it displays IPv6 statistics.
tcp Like icmp, but with TCP statistics.
ifstat Display, in the lower window, statistics about network
throughput on a per-interface basis.
iostat Display, in the lower window, statistics about processor use
and disk throughput. Statistics on processor use appear as
bar graphs of the amount of time executing in user mode
(`user'), in user mode running low priority processes
(`nice'), in system mode (`system'), in interrupt mode
(`interrupt'), and idle (`idle'). Statistics on disk
throughput show, for each drive, megabytes per second, aver‐
age number of disk transactions per second, and average kilo‐
bytes of data per transaction. This information may be dis‐
played as bar graphs or as rows of numbers which scroll down‐
ward. Bar graphs are shown by default.
The following commands are specific to the iostat display;
the minimum unambiguous prefix may be supplied.
numbers Show the disk I/O statistics in numeric form.
Values are displayed in numeric columns which
scroll downward.
bars Show the disk I/O statistics in bar graph form
(default).
kbpt Toggle the display of kilobytes per transaction.
(the default is to not display kilobytes per
transaction).
sensors Display, in the lower window, the current values of available
hardware sensors, in a format similar to that of sysctl(8).
swap Show information about swap space usage on all the swap areas
compiled into the kernel. The first column is the device
name of the partition. The next column is the total space
available in the partition. The ``Used'' column indicates
the total blocks used so far; the graph shows the percentage
of space in use on each partition. If there are more than
one swap partition in use, a total line is also shown. Areas
known to the kernel, but not in use are shown as not avail‐
able.
mbufs Display, in the lower window, the number of mbufs allocated
for particular uses, i.e. data, socket structures, etc.
vmstat Take over the entire display and show a (rather crowded) com‐
pendium of statistics related to virtual memory usage,
process scheduling, device interrupts, system name transla‐
tion cacheing, disk I/O etc.
The upper left quadrant of the screen shows the number of
users logged in and the load average over the last one, five,
and fifteen minute intervals.
Below this line are statistics on memory utilization. The
first row (`Act') reports memory usage only among active pro‐
cesses, that is processes that have run in the previous
twenty seconds. The second row (`All') reports on memory
usage of all processes. Two groups of columns are shown,
`REAL' and `VIRTUAL'. The first column (`Tot') reports on
the number of physical pages claimed by processes. The sec‐
ond column (`Share') reports the number of physical pages
that are devoted to read only text pages. The third and
fourth columns report the same two figures for virtual pages,
that is the number of pages that would be needed if all pro‐
cesses had all of their pages. Finally the last column
(`Free') shows the number of physical pages on the free list.
Below the memory display is a list of the average number of
processes (over the last refresh interval) that are runnable
(`r'), in page wait (`p'), in disk wait other than paging
(`d'), sleeping (`s'), and swapped out but desiring to run
(`w'). The row also shows the average number of context
switches (`Csw'), traps (`Trp'; includes page faults), system
calls (`Sys'), interrupts (`Int'), network software inter‐
rupts (`Sof'), and page faults (`Flt').
Below the process queue length listing is a listing of CPU
usage, a numerical listing and a bar graph showing the amount
of system (`='), interrupt (`+'), user (`>'), nice (`-'), and
idle time (` ').
Below the CPU usage display are statistics on name transla‐
tions. It lists the number of path names translated in the
previous interval (`Path-lookups'), the number and percentage
of the path lookups that were handled by the name translation
cache, and the average number of path components in path
lookups (`Components').
At the bottom left is the disk usage display. It reports the
number of kilobytes per transaction (`KB/t'), read transac‐
tions per second (`tpr/s'), megabytes per second in read
transaction (`MBr/s'), write transactions per second
(`tpw/s'), megabytes per second in write transaction
(`MBw/s') and the percentage of the time the disk was busy
(`% busy') averaged over the refresh period of the display
(by default, five seconds). The system keeps statistics on
most every storage device. In general, up to seven devices
are displayed. The devices displayed by default are the
first devices in the kernel's device list. See devstat(3)
and devstat(9) for details on the devstat system.
If at most 4 disk devices are shown, extended virtual memory
statistics are shown right to disk usage: pages zero filled
on demand (`zfod'), pages optimized zero filled on demand
(`ozfod'), slow (i.e. non-optimized) zero fills percentage
(`%slo-z'), total pages freed (`tfree').
Under the date in the upper right hand quadrant are statis‐
tics on paging and swapping activity. The first two columns
(`VN PAGER') report the average number of pages brought in
and out per second over the last refresh interval due to page
faults and the paging daemon. The third and fourth columns
(`SWAP PAGER') report the average number of pages brought in
and out per second over the last refresh interval due to swap
requests initiated by the scheduler. The first row (`count')
of the display shows the average number of disk transfers per
second over the last refresh interval; the second row
(`pages') of the display shows the average number of pages
transferred per second over the last refresh interval.
Below the paging statistics is a column of lines regarding
the virtual memory system which list the average number of
pages zero filled on demand (`zfod') (shown with extended
virtual memory statistics if screen space permits), pages
copied on write (`cow'), pages wired down (`wire'), active
pages (`act'), inactive pages (`inact'), pages on the buffer
cache queue (`cache'), number of free pages (`free'), pages
freed by the page daemon (`daefr'), pages freed by exiting
processes (`prcfr'), pages reactivated from the free list
(`react'), times the page daemon was awakened (`pdwak'),
pages analyzed by the page daemon (`pdpgs'), and intransit
blocking page faults (`intrn') per second over the refresh
interval.
At the bottom of this column are lines showing the amount of
memory, in kilobytes, used for the buffer cache (`buf'), the
number of dirty buffers in the buffer cache (`dirtybuf'),
desired maximum size of vnode cache (`desiredvnodes') (mostly
unused, except to size the name cache), number of vnodes
actually allocated (`numvnodes'), and number of allocated
vnodes that are free (`freevnodes').
Running down the right hand side of the display is a break‐
down of the interrupts being handled by the system (`Inter‐
rupts'). At the top of the list is the total interrupts per
second over the time interval (`total'). The rest of the
column breaks down the total on a device by device basis.
Only devices that have interrupted at least once since boot
time are shown.
The following commands are specific to the vmstat display;
the minimum unambiguous prefix may be supplied.
boot Display cumulative statistics since the system
was booted.
run Display statistics as a running total from the
point this command is given.
time Display statistics averaged over the refresh
interval (the default).
want_fd Toggle the display of fd devices in the disk
usage display.
zero Reset running statistics to zero.
pvmmeter Display per CPU statistics, including LAPIC timer interrupts
(`timer'), IPIs (Inter-Processor Interrupts) (`ipi'), exter‐
nal interrupts (i.e. not timer or ipi) (`extint'), and CPU
time breakdown (`user%', `nice%', `sys%', `intr%', and
`idle%').
netstat Display, in the lower window, network connections. By
default, network servers awaiting requests are not displayed.
Each address is displayed in the format ``host.port'', with
each shown symbolically, when possible. It is possible to
have addresses displayed numerically, limit the display to a
set of ports, hosts, and/or protocols (the minimum unambigu‐
ous prefix may be supplied):
all Toggle the displaying of server processes
awaiting requests (this is the equivalent of
the -a flag to netstat(1)).
numbers Display network addresses numerically.
names Display network addresses symbolically.
proto protocol
Display only network connections using the
indicated protocol. Supported protocols are
tcp, udp, and all.
ignore [items]
Do not display information about connections
associated with the specified hosts or ports.
Hosts and ports may be specified by name
(``vangogh'', ``ftp''), or numerically. Host
addresses use the Internet dot notation
(``128.32.0.9''). Multiple items may be speci‐
fied with a single command by separating them
with spaces.
display [items]
Display information about the connections asso‐
ciated with the specified hosts or ports. As
for ignore, items may be names or numbers.
show [ports | hosts]
Show, on the command line, the currently
selected protocols, hosts, and ports. Hosts
and ports which are being ignored are prefixed
with a `!'. If ports or hosts is supplied as
an argument to show, then only the requested
information will be displayed.
reset Reset the port, host, and protocol matching
mechanisms to the default (any protocol, port,
or host).
Commands to switch between displays may be abbreviated to the minimum
unambiguous prefix; for example, ``io'' for ``iostat''. Certain informa‐
tion may be discarded when the screen size is insufficient for display.
For example, on a machine with 10 drives the iostat bar graph displays
only 3 drives on a 24 line terminal. When a bar graph would overflow the
allotted screen space it is truncated and the actual value is printed
``over top'' of the bar.
The following commands are common to each display which shows information
about disk drives. These commands are used to select a set of drives to
report on, should your system have more drives configured than can nor‐
mally be displayed on the screen.
ignore [drives]
Do not display information about the drives indicated.
Multiple drives may be specified, separated by spaces.
display [drives]
Display information about the drives indicated. Multiple
drives may be specified, separated by spaces.
only [drives]
Display only the specified drives. Multiple drives may be
specified, separated by spaces.
drives Display a list of available devices.
match type,if,pass [| ...]
Display devices matching the given pattern. The basic
matching expressions are the same as those used in
iostat(8) with one difference. Instead of specifying mul‐
tiple -t arguments which are then ORed together, the user
instead specifies multiple matching expressions joined by
the pipe (‘|’) character. The comma separated arguments
within each matching expression are ANDed together, and
then the pipe separated matching expressions are ORed
together. Any device matching the combined expression will
be displayed, if there is room to display it. For example:
match da,scsi | cd,ide
This will display all SCSI Direct Access devices and all
IDE CDROM devices.
match da | sa | cd,pass
This will display all Direct Access devices, all Sequential
Access devices, and all passthrough devices that provide
access to CDROM drives.
FILES
/boot/kernel For the namelist.
/dev/kmem For information in main memory.
/etc/hosts For host names.
/etc/networks For network names.
/etc/services For port names.
SEE ALSOnetstat(1), kvm(3), icmp(4), icmp6(4), ip(4), ip6(4), tcp(4), udp(4),
iostat(8), sysctl(8), vmstat(8)HISTORY
The systat program appeared in 4.3BSD. The icmp, ip, and tcp displays
appeared in FreeBSD 3.0; the notion of having different display modes for
the ICMP, IP, TCP, and UDP statistics was stolen from the -C option to
netstat(1) in Silicon Graphics' IRIX system.
BUGS
Certain displays presume a minimum of 80 characters per line. The vmstat
display looks out of place because it is (it was added in as a separate
display rather than created as a new program).
BSD September 28, 2009 BSD
