SAR(8) Maintenance 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)