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IOSTAT(8) System Manager's Manual IOSTAT(8)
NAME
iostat - report I/O statistics
SYNOPSIS
iostat [-CDdITXxyz] [-c count] [-H height] [-W width] [-w wait] [drives]
DESCRIPTION
iostat displays kernel I/O statistics on terminal, disk and CPU
operations. By default, iostat displays one line of statistics averaged
over the machine's run time. The use of -c or -w presents successive
lines averaged over the wait period. The -I option causes iostat to
print raw, unaveraged values (totals).
Only the last disk option specified (-d, -D, -X, -x, or -y) is used.
The options are as follows:
-C Show CPU statistics. This is enabled by default unless any
of the -D, -d, -T, -X, -x, or -y flags are used.
-c count Repeat the display count times. Unless the -I flag is in
effect, 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 wait interval is specified, the default is 1
second.
-D Show alternative disk statistics. Displays number of
transfers, kilobytes transferred, and time spent in
transfers, during the wait period (or since boot with -I).
Use of this flag disables the default display.
-d Show disk statistics. This is the default. Displays number
of transfers per second, kilobytes per transfer, and
megabytes transferred per second. Use of this flag disables
the default display of CPU and tty statistics.
-H height Set the page size (length, or height) explicitly, as the
number of lines, height. If not set, the page length is
taken from the environment variable LINES if set, or from the
terminal (window) size, if output is to a terminal and its
size is set, and otherwise defaults to 20. If explicitly set
to zero, pages are considered to be infinitely long. This
parameter determines the frequency at which repeated headers
are output. If the value is greater than zero, but too small
for the header, along with one output set, then a new header
will be produced for each set of output.
-I Show the running total values, rather than an average.
-T Show tty statistics. This is enabled by default unless one,
or more, of the -C, -D, -d, -X, -x, or -y flags are used.
-W width Set the page width explicitly, as the number of columns of
characters, width. If not set, the page width is taken from
the environment variable COLUMNS if set, or from the terminal
(window) size, if output is to a terminal and its size is
set, and otherwise defaults to 80. If explicitly set to 0,
lines are considered infinitely long. This width is used
only to determine the number of drives to display by default
when no drive list is given. In other cases output will be
as wide as needed to display the data requested.
-w wait Pause wait seconds between each display. If no repeat count
is specified, the default is infinity.
-X Show limited alternative disk statistics. Displays megabytes
transferred, and time spent in transfers, during the wait
period (or since boot with -I). Use of this flag disables
the default display.
-x Show extended disk statistics. Each disk is displayed on a
line of its own with all available statistics. This option
overrides all other display options, and all disks are
displayed unless specific disk names are provided as
arguments. Additionally, separate read and write statistics
are displayed. The -C and -T options are ignored with this
output format.
-y Shows the extended statistics (as with -x) and additional
queuing statistics. Output does not fit in an 80 column
window. The -C and -T options are ignored with this output
format.
-z Replaces drive and CPU statistic outputs that are exactly
zero with spaces. Note that zero values can still appear -
this indicates a value that was not zero, but was rounded
down so appears as zero. Drive output is replaced by spaces
only when the drive did no input or output at all in the
interval, or with -I, has never done any I/O.
iostat displays its information in the following format:
tty
tin characters read from terminals
tout characters written to terminals
disks
Disk operations. The header of the field is the disk name and unit
number. If more drives are configured in the system that fit
across the current display, iostat displays only those drives that
fit on the display. To force iostat to display specific drives,
they may be supplied on the command line, either as names or
fnmatch() patterns.
t/s transfers per second
KB/t Kilobytes transferred per disk transfer
MB/s Megabytes transferred per second
The alternative display format, (selected with -D), presents the
following values:
xfr Disk transfers
KB Kilobytes transferred
time Seconds spent in disk activity
With the -y flag, the following queuing measurements are added:
wait Number of I/O requests queued up
actv Number of currently active I/O requests
wsvc_t Average waiting time of an I/O request in milliseconds
asvc_t Average duration of an I/O request in milliseconds
wtime Seconds spent in the waiting queue. Queuing data might not
be available from all drivers and is then shown as zeros.
With the -X flag, the following queuing measurements are added:
MB/s Megabytes transferred per second
time Seconds spent in disk activity
cpu
us % of CPU time in user mode
ni % of CPU time in user mode running niced processes
sy % of CPU time in system mode
in % of CPU time in interrupt mode
id % of CPU time in idle mode
Note that because of rounding, these percentages may appear to
total more or less than 100.
SEE ALSO
fstat(1), netstat(1), nfsstat(1), ps(1), systat(1), vmstat(1),
fnmatch(3), pstat(8)
The sections starting with ``Interpreting system activity'' in Installing
and Operating 4.3BSD.
HISTORY
iostat appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. The -x option was added in
NetBSD 1.4. Collection of queuing values and the -y option were added in
NetBSD 8.0. The -X option was added in NetBSD 11.0. The archaic option
format:
iostat [drives ...] [wait [count]]
remains supported (the first drive whose name starts with a digit is
taken to be the wait period) but is deprecated, and may be removed in a
future version, so should not be used.
NetBSD 10.99 July 28, 2023 NetBSD 10.99