pmstat(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OUTPUT | FILES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMSTAT(1)                General Commands Manual               PMSTAT(1)

NAME         top

       pcp-vmstat, pmstat - high-level system performance overview

SYNOPSIS         top

       pcp [pcp options] vmstat [interval [samples]]

       pmstat [-gLlPVxz?]  [-a archive] [-A align] [-h host] [-H file]
       [-n pmnsfile] [-O offset] [-p port] [-s samples] [-S starttime]
       [-t interval] [-T endtime] [-Z timezone]

       pcp-vmstat ...

DESCRIPTION         top

       pmstat provides a one line summary of system performance every
       interval unit of time (the default is 5 seconds).  pmstat is
       intended to monitor system performance at the highest level,
       after which other tools may be used to examine subsystems in
       which potential performance problems may be observed in greater
       detail.

       pcp-vmstat is a simple wrapper for use with the pcp(1) command,
       providing a more familiar command line format for some users.  It
       also enables the extended reporting option by default, see the -x
       option below.

       Multiple hosts may be monitored by supplying more than one host
       with multiple -h flags (for live monitoring) or by providing a
       name of the hostlist file, where each line contain one host name,
       with -H, or multiple -a flags (for retrospective monitoring from
       sets of archives).

       By default, pmstat fetches metrics by connecting to the
       Performance Metrics Collector Daemon (PMCD) on the local host.
       If the -L option is specified, then pmcd(1) is bypassed, and
       metrics are fetched from PMDAs on the local host using the
       standalone PM_CONTEXT_LOCAL variant of pmNewContext(3).  When the
       -h option is specified, pmstat connects to the pmcd(1) on host
       and fetches metrics from there.  As mentioned above, multiple
       hosts may be monitored by supplying multiple -h flags.

       Alternatively, if the -a option is used, the metrics are
       retrieved from the Performance Co-Pilot archive files identified
       by archive, which is a comma-separated list of names, each of
       which may be the base name of an archive or the name of a
       directory containing one or more archives.  Multiple sets of
       archives may be replayed by supplying multiple -a flags.  When
       the -a flag is used, the -P flag may also be used to pause the
       output after each interval.

       Standalone mode can only connect to the local host, using a set
       of archives implies a host name, and nominating a host precludes
       using an archive, so the options -L, -a and -h are mutually
       exclusive.

       pmstat may relinquish its own timing control, and operate under
       the control of a pmtime(1) process that uses a GUI dialog to
       provide timing control.  In this case, either the -g option
       should be used to start pmstat as the sole client of a new
       pmtime(1) instance, or -p should be used to attach pmstat to an
       existing pmtime(1) instance via the IPC channel identified by the
       port argument.

       The -S, -T, -O and -A options may be used to define a time window
       to restrict the samples retrieved, set an initial origin within
       the time window, or specify a ``natural'' alignment of the sample
       times; refer to PCPIntro(1) for a complete description of these
       options.

OPTIONS         top

       The available command line options are:

       -a archive, --archive=archive
            Performance metric values are retrieved from the set of
            Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive files identified by the
            archive argument, which is a comma-separated list of names,
            each of which may be the base name of an archive or the name
            of a directory containing one or more archives.

       -A align, --align=align
            Force the initial sample to be aligned on the boundary of a
            natural time unit align.  Refer to PCPIntro(1) for a
            complete description of the syntax for align.

       -g, --guimode
            Start pmstat as the client of a new pmtime(1) server process
            for replay of archived performance data using the pmtime(1)
            graphical user interface.

       -h host, --host=host
            Fetch performance metrics from pmcd(1) on host, rather than
            from the default localhost.

       -H path, --hostsfile=path
            Specify the path to a file containing a set of hostnames
            where pmcd(1) is running , rather than using the default
            localhost.

       -K spec, --spec-local=spec
            When fetching metrics from a local context (see -L), the -K
            option may be used to control the DSO PMDAs that should be
            made accessible.  The spec argument conforms to the syntax
            described in pmSpecLocalPMDA(3).  More than one -K option
            may be used.

       -l, --suffix
            Prints the last 7 characters of a hostname in summaries
            involving more than one host (when more than one -h option
            has been specified on the command line).

       -L, --local-PMDA
            Use a local context to collect metrics from DSO PMDAs on the
            local host without PMCD.  See also -K.

       -n pmnsfile, --namespace=pmnsfile
            Load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS(5))
            from the file pmnsfile.

       -O origin, --origin=origin
            When reporting archived metrics, start reporting at origin
            within the time window (see -S and -T).  Refer to
            PCPIntro(1) for a complete description of the syntax for
            origin.

       -p port, --guiport=port
            Attach pmstat to an existing pmtime(1) time control process
            instance via the IPC channel identified by the port
            argument.  This option is normally only used by other tools,
            e.g.  pmchart(1), when they launch pmstat with synchronized
            time control.

       -P, --pause
            Pause between updates for archive replay.

       -s samples, --samples=samples
            The samples option defines the number of samples to be
            retrieved and reported.  If samples is 0 or -s is not
            specified, pmstat will sample and report continuously - this
            is the default behavior.

       -S starttime, --start=starttime
            When reporting archived metrics, the report will be
            restricted to those records logged at or after starttime.
            Refer to PCPIntro(1) for a complete description of the
            syntax for starttime.

       -t interval, --interval=interval
            Set the reporting interval to something other than the
            default 1 second.  The interval argument follows the syntax
            described in PCPIntro(1), and in the simplest form may be an
            unsigned integer (the implied units in this case are
            seconds).

       -T endtime, --finish=endtime
            When reporting archived metrics, the report will be
            restricted to those records logged before or at endtime.

       -V, --version
            Display version number and exit.

       -x, --xcpu
            The extended CPU metrics option, causes two additional CPU
            metrics to be reported, namely wait for I/O ("wa") and
            virtualisation steal time ("st").

       -z, --hostzone
            Change the reporting timezone to the local timezone at the
            host that is the source of the performance metrics, as
            identified via either the -h or -a options.

       -Z timezone, --timezone=timezone
            By default, pmtime reports the time of day according to the
            local timezone on the system where pmstat is run.  The -Z
            option changes the timezone to timezone in the format of the
            environment variable TZ as described in environ(7).

       -?, --help
            Display usage message and exit.

OUTPUT         top

       The output from pmstat is directed to standard output, and the
       columns in the report are interpreted as follows:

       loadavg
              The 1 minute load average.

       memory The swpd column indicates average swap space used during
              the interval, in Kbytes.  The free column indicates
              average free memory during the interval, in Kbytes.  The
              buff column indicates average buffer memory in use during
              the interval, in Kbytes.  The cache column indicates
              average cached memory in use during the interval, in
              Kbytes.

              If the values become large, they are reported as Mbytes (m
              suffix) or Gbytes (g suffix).

       swap   The metrics in this area of the kernel instrumentation are
              of varying value.  We try to report the average number of
              pages that are paged in (pi) and out (po) per second
              during the interval.  If the corresponding page swapping
              metrics are unavailable, we report the average rate per
              second of swap operations in (si) and out (so) during the
              interval.  It is normal for the ``in'' values to be non-
              zero, but the system is suffering memory stress if the
              ``out'' values are non-zero over an extended period.

              If the values become large, they are reported as thousands
              of operations per second (K suffix) or millions of
              operations per second (M suffix).

       io     The bi and bo columns indicate the average rate per second
              of block input and block output operations (respectfully)
              during the interval.  Unless all file systems have a 1
              Kbyte block size, these rates do not directly indicate
              Kbytes transferred.

              If the values become large, they are reported as thousands
              of operations per second (K suffix) or millions of
              operations per second (M suffix).

       system Interrupt rate (in) and context switch rate (cs).  Rates
              are expressed as average operations per second during the
              interval.  Note that the interrupt rate is normally at
              least HZ (the clock interrupt rate, usually 100)
              interrupts per second.

              If the values become large, they are reported as thousands
              of operations per second (K suffix) or millions of
              operations per second (M suffix).

       cpu    Percentage of CPU time spent executing user and "nice
              user" code (us), system and interrupt processing code
              (sy), idle loop (id).

       If any values for the associated performance metrics are
       unavailable, the value appears as ``?'' in the output.

FILES         top

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
            default PMNS specification files

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.pmstat
            pmlogger(1) configuration for creating an archive suitable
            for replay with pmstat

PCP ENVIRONMENT         top

       Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to
       parameterize the file and directory names used by PCP.  On each
       installation, the file /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values
       for these variables.  The $PCP_CONF variable may be used to
       specify an alternative configuration file, as described in
       pcp.conf(5).

       For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see
       pmGetOptions(3).

SEE ALSO         top

       PCPIntro(1), pmclient(1), pmtime(1), PMAPI(3), pmNewContext(3),
       pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and PMNS(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, send it to pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2023-12-16.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP                         PMSTAT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: pcpintro(1)pmcd(1)pmclient(1)pmrep(1)pmtime(1)pmgetoptions(3)