SAR(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures SAR(8)

NAME

sar, sa1, sa2, sadc - system activity report package

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lib/sa/sadc [t n] [ofile]


/usr/lib/sa/sa1 [t n]


/usr/lib/sa/sa2 [-aAbcdgkmpqruvwy] [-e time] [-f filename]
[-i sec] [-s time]

DESCRIPTION

System activity data can be accessed at the special request of a user
(see sar(1)) and automatically, on a routine basis, as described
here. The operating system contains several counters that are
incremented as various system actions occur. These include counters
for CPU utilization, buffer usage, disk and tape I/O activity, TTY
device activity, switching and system-call activity, file-access,
queue activity, inter-process communications, and paging. For more
general system statistics, use iostat(8), sar(1), or vmstat(8).


sadc and two shell procedures, sa1 and sa2, are used to sample, save,
and process this data.


sadc, the data collector, samples system data n times, with an
interval of t seconds between samples, and writes in binary format to
ofile or to standard output. The sampling interval t should be
greater than 5 seconds; otherwise, the activity of sadc itself may
affect the sample. If t and n are omitted, a special record is
written. This facility can be used at system boot time, when booting
to a multi-user state, to mark the time at which the counters restart
from zero. For example, when accounting is enabled, the
svc:/system/sar:default service writes the restart mark to the daily
data file using the command entry:

su sys -c "/usr/lib/sa/sadc /var/adm/sa/sa'date +%d'"


The shell script sa1, a variant of sadc, is used to collect and store
data in the binary file /var/adm/sa/sadd, where dd is the current
day. The arguments t and n cause records to be written n times at an
interval of t seconds, or once if omitted. The following entries in
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/sys will produce records every 20 minutes
during working hours and hourly otherwise:

0 * * * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa1
20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa1


See crontab(1) for details.


The shell script sa2, a variant of sar, writes a daily report in the
file /var/adm/sa/sardd. See the OPTIONS section in sar(1) for an
explanation of the various options. The following entry in
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/sys will report important activities hourly
during the working day:

5 18 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -s 8:00 -e 18:01 -i 1200 -A

FILES

/tmp/sa.adrfl

address file


/var/adm/sa/sadd

Daily data file


/var/adm/sa/sardd

Daily report file


/var/spool/cron/crontabs/sys

SEE ALSO

crontab(1), sar(1), svcs(1), timex(1), attributes(7), smf(7),
iostat(8), svcadm(8), vmstat(8)

NOTES

The sar service is managed by the service management facility,
smf(7), under the service identifier:

svc:/system/sar


Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling,
or requesting restart, can be performed using svcadm(8). The
service's status can be queried using the svcs(1) command.

May 13, 2017 SAR(8)