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VMSTAT(8) System Manager's Manual VMSTAT(8) NAME vmstat -- report virtual memory statistics SYNOPSIS vmstat [--libxo] [-afHhimoPsz] [-M core [-N system]] [-c count] [-n devs] [-p type,if,pass] [-w wait] [disks ...] [wait [count]] DESCRIPTION The vmstat utility reports certain kernel statistics kept about process, virtual memory, disk, trap and cpu activity. If the -M option is not specified, information is obtained from the cur- rently running kernel via the sysctl(3) interface. Otherwise, information is read from the specified core file, using the name list from the speci- fied kernel image (or from the default image). The options are as follows: --libxo Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different human and machine readable formats. See xo_options(7) for details on command line arguments. -a When used with -i, include statistics about interrupts that have never been generated. -c 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 repeat count is specified, and -w is specified, the default is infinity, otherwise the default is one. -f Report on the number fork(2), vfork(2) and rfork(2) system calls since system startup, and the number of pages of virtual memory in- volved in each. -h Changes memory columns into more easily human readable form. The default if standard output is a terminal device. -H Changes memory columns into straight numbers. The default if stan- dard output is not a terminal device (such as a script). -i Report on the number of interrupts taken by each device since sys- tem startup. -M Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core. -N If -M is also specified, extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from. -m Report on the usage of kernel dynamic memory allocated using mal- loc(9) by type. -n Change the maximum number of disks to display from the default of 2. -o Display a list of virtual memory objects in the system and the res- ident memory used by each object. -P Report per-cpu system/user/idle cpu statistics. -p Specify which types of devices to display. There are three differ- ent categories of devices: device type: da Direct Access devices sa Sequential Access devices printer Printers proc Processor devices worm Write Once Read Multiple devices cd CD devices scanner Scanner devices optical Optical Memory devices changer Medium Changer devices comm Communication devices array Storage Array devices enclosure Enclosure Services devices floppy Floppy devices interface: IDE Integrated Drive Electronics devices SCSI Small Computer System Interface devices NVME NVM Express Interface devices other Any other device interface passthrough: pass Passthrough devices The user must specify at least one device type, and may specify at most one device type from each category. Multiple device types in a single device type statement must be separated by commas. Any number of -p arguments may be specified on the command line. All -p arguments are ORed together to form a matching expression against which all devices in the system are compared. Any device that fully matches any -p argument will be included in the vmstat output, up to two devices, or the maximum number of devices speci- fied by the user. -s Display the contents of the sum structure, giving the total number of several kinds of paging related events which have occurred since system startup. -w Pause wait seconds between each display. If no repeat wait inter- val is specified, the default is 1 second. The vmstat command will accept and honor a non-integer number of seconds. -z Report on memory used by the kernel zone allocator, uma(9), by zone. The wait and count arguments may be given after their respective flags at any point on the command line before the disks argument(s), or without their flags, as the final argument(s). The latter form is accepted for backwards compatibility, but it is preferred to use the forms with -w and -c to avoid ambiguity. By default, vmstat displays the following information: procs Information about the number of threads in various states: r running or in run queue b blocked for resources (i/o, paging, etc.) w swapped out memory Information about the usage of virtual and real memory. Mapped virtual memory is a sum of all of the virtual pages belong- ing to mapped virtual memory objects. Note that the entire memory object's size is considered mapped even if only a subset of the ob- ject's pages are currently mapped. This statistic is not related to the active page queue which is used to track real memory. avm mapped virtual memory (previously called active in vmstat output) fre size of the free list page Information about page faults and paging activity. These are given in units per second. flt total number of page faults re pages reactivated (found in laundry or inactive queues) pi pages paged in po pages paged out fr pages freed sr pages scanned by page daemon disks Disk operations per second (this field is system dependent). Typi- cally paging will be split across the available drives. The header of the field is the first two characters of the disk name and the unit number. If more than two disk drives are configured in the system, vmstat displays only the first two drives, unless the user specifies the -n argument to increase the number of drives dis- played. This will probably cause the display to exceed 80 columns, however. To force vmstat to display specific drives, their names may be supplied on the command line. The vmstat utility defaults to show disks first, and then various other random devices in the system to add up to two devices, if there are that many devices in the system. If devices are specified on the command line, or if a device type matching pattern is specified (see above), vmstat will only display the given devices or the devices matching the pattern, and will not randomly select other devices in the system. faults Trap/interrupt rates per second. in device interrupts (including clock interrupts) sy system calls cs cpu context switches cpu Breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time. us user time for normal and low priority processes sy system and interrupt time id cpu idle FILES /boot/kernel/kernel default kernel namelist /dev/kmem default memory file EXAMPLES The command: vmstat -w 5 will print what the system is doing every five seconds. The command: vmstat -p da -p cd -w 1 will tell vmstat to select the first two direct access or CDROM devices and display statistics on those devices, as well as other systems statistics every second. SEE ALSO fstat(1), netstat(1), nfsstat(1), ps(1), systat(1), libmemstat(3), libxo(3), xo_options(7), gstat(8), iostat(8), pstat(8), sysctl(8), mal- loc(9), uma(9) The sections starting with ``Interpreting system activity'' in Installing and Operating 4.3BSD. HISTORY The vmstat utility first appeared in 3BSD. BUGS The -c and -w options are only available with the default output. FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly July 16, 2025 VMSTAT(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | BUGS
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