How to use System Activity Report, 'sar', to View Performance Information on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11

Article Summary: This article provides information on how to use System Activity Report, 'sar', to view performance information on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.

Table of Contents:

1. Installation
2. Configure logging
3. Usage of the 'sar' command

1. Installation

• Ensure you are logged in as 'root'
• 'sar' is apart of the 'sysstat' package
• # yast2 -i sysstat
• Create a symlink for the cron job :
  • # ln -s /etc/sysstat/sysstat.cron /etc/cron.d/sysstat.cron
• Restart cron service :
• # rccron restart

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2. Configure logging

• Edit '/etc/sysstat/sysstat' with your favorite editor
• Find the line that starts with 'HISTORY='
• The value represents the number of days to retain log files
• The default is sixty days and you can change it to meet your needs
• Log files will be stored in the '/var/log/sa' directory

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3. Usage of the 'sar' command

• Display the current day's :
  • CPU statistics

:

• # sar
• To specify a CPU, for example CPU 3 :
  • # sar -P 3
• Queue length and average statistics :
  • # sar -q
•  RAM statistics :
• # sar -r
• # sar -R
• # sar -b
• # sar -c
• # sar -B
• # sar -d
• # sar -n NAME
• Replace NAME with one of the following :
  • ALL – This displays all of the above information
  • DEV – Displays network devices vital statistics
  • EDEV – Display network device failure statistics
  • EICMP – Displays ICMPv4 network errors
  • EIP – Displays IPv4 network errors
  • EIP6 – Displays IPv6 network errors
  • ETCP – Displays TCPv4 network errors
  • ICMP – Displays ICMPv4 network traffic
  • ICMP6 – Displays ICMPv6 network traffic
  • IP – Displays IPv4 network traffic
  • IP6 – Displays IPv6 network traffic
  • NFS – Displays NFS client activities
  • NFSD – Displays NFS server activities
  • SOCK – Displays sockets in use for IPv4
  • SOCK6 – Displays sockets in use for IPv6
  • TCP – Displays TCPv4 network traffic
  • UDP – Displays UDPv4 network traffic
  • UDP6 - Displays UDPv6 network traffic
• Swap space utilization :
• Disk statistics :
• Process creation statistics :
• Paging statistics :
• Block device statistics :
• Network statistics :
• Inode statistics :
  • # sar -v
• Swapping statistics :
• # sar -W
• # sar -w
• System switching statistics :
• Real time information can be displayed as well by adding interval and integer arguments :
  • Example : Display CPU statistics every five seconds a total of ten times
  • # sar 5 10
• By default the 'sar' command display's the current day's statistics, but you can change that by use the switches -s for start and -e for end
• Example : # sar -s 12:00:00 -e 16:00:00
• This will display the CPU statistics for today between noon and 4PM

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