There are many commands, tools, and variations of the two for you to put to work when it comes to system statistics in Linux. However, if you need the specifics around virtual memory, you want to use vmstat.
What is it?
Virtual memory statistics reporter, also known as vmstat, is a Linux command-line tool that reports various bits of system information. Things like memory, paging, processes, IO, CPU, and disk scheduling are all included in the array of information provided.
When you run vmstat, keep in mind that the first report is an average of the requested information since the time of the last reboot. Subsequent reports use measurements of delay and count. I cover those specifically during the syntax discussion.
Command syntax
The syntax for the vmstat command is rather simple:
$ vmstat [options][delay [count]]
- Options - these are covered in detail in the following section.
- Delay - this defines the time interval between updates. If no delay is specified, the report runs as an average since the last reboot.
- Count - this defines the number of updates printed after the given delay interval. If no count is set, the default in an infinite number of updates every x seconds (where x = delay).
Basic output and how to make sense of it
The most basic form of this command uses no options at all. Here is the standard output and how to read it:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
1 0 0 6012852 2120 817048 0 0 2805 289 797 657 21 7 71 1 0
You see information around processes, memory, swap, IO, system, and CPU. The man page for the command states the following (man vmstat):
- Procs
- r: The number of runnable processes (running or waiting for run times)
- 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 a block device (/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 switcher per second.
- CPU
- 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. Before Linux 2.5.41, included in idle.
- st: Time stolen from a virtual machine. Prior to Linux 2.6.11, unknown.
Among the important information here, you find the amount of free memory on the system, as well as the amount of swap activity you are currently experiencing.
Options to know
The -a option will give us the active and inactive memory of the system:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat -a
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
r b swpd free inact active si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
0 0 0 6022104 609656 1185980 0 0 180 40 80 79 1 1 98 0 0
The -f option will give us the number of forks since boot:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat -f
2911 forks
Note that a fork is any process that spawns another processes while remaining active.
The -s option displays various memory statistics as well as CPU and IO event counters:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat -s
8161656 K total memory
1216012 K used memory
1186276 K active memory
609632 K inactive memory
6021980 K free memory
2120 K buffer memory
921544 K swap cache
3145724 K total swap
0 K used swap
3145724 K free swap
5888 non-nice user cpu ticks
476 nice user cpu ticks
1520 system cpu ticks
529965 idle cpu ticks
331 IO-wait cpu ticks
939 IRQ cpu ticks
103 softirq cpu ticks
0 stolen cpu ticks
755494 pages paged in
167719 pages paged out
0 pages swapped in
0 pages swapped out
365026 interrupts
374126 CPU context switches
1590618807 boot time
2952 forks
The -d option gives you read/write stats for various disks:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat -d
disk- ------------reads------------ ------------writes----------- -----IO------
total merged sectors ms total merged sectors ms cur sec
sda 17019 40 1498524 10680 4683 1050 335510 1561 0 10
sdb 105 0 6232 67 0 0 0 0 0 0
sdc 105 0 6232 59 0 0 0 0 0 0
sr0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
dm-0 16677 0 1469065 12431 5713 0 336816 2485 0 10
dm-1 98 0 4440 39 0 0 0 0 0 0
The -t option gives us timestamp information with every update, a seen here:
[tcarrigan@rhel ~]$ vmstat -t 5 10
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu----- -----timestamp-----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st EDT
1 0 0 6021412 2120 921548 0 0 118 26 62 66 1 0 99 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:11
0 0 0 6021300 2120 921548 0 0 0 0 349 510 1 0 99 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:16
0 0 0 6021272 2120 921548 0 0 0 2 196 294 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:21
0 0 0 6021272 2120 921548 0 0 0 0 110 161 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:26
0 0 0 6021272 2120 921548 0 0 0 0 112 169 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:31
0 0 0 6021272 2120 921548 0 0 0 0 171 267 0 0 99 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:36
0 0 0 6021188 2120 921552 0 0 0 0 201 291 0 0 99 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:41
0 0 0 6021188 2120 921552 0 0 0 0 152 233 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:46
2 0 0 6021188 2120 921552 0 0 0 3 127 165 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:51
0 0 0 6021188 2120 921552 0 0 0 0 95 131 0 0 100 0 0 2020-05-27 19:00:56
You see that there are 10 updates, printed every five seconds, with timestamp information attached.
Also, please note that all memory stats are displayed in kilobytes by default.
Summary
To wrap up, let's look at what we learned. The vmstat command is a powerful system statistics tool that can be used with or without options. It prints updates using two main variables (delay and count), and we can customize the command and output to suit our needs. I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the vmstat command. I will cover ifstat in a forthcoming article, so keep an eye out for that!
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