Command Section

VMSTAT(8)               FreeBSD System Manager's Manual              VMSTAT(8)

NAME
     vmstat - report virtual memory statistics

SYNOPSIS
     vmstat [--libxo] [-afHhimoPsz] [-M core [-N system]] [-c count] [-n devs]
            [-p type,if,pass] [-w wait] [disks ...] [wait [count]]

DESCRIPTION
     The vmstat utility reports certain kernel statistics kept about process,
     virtual memory, disk, trap and cpu activity.

     If the -M option is not specified, information is obtained from the
     currently running kernel via the sysctl(3) interface.  Otherwise,
     information is read from the specified core file, using the name list
     from the specified kernel image (or from the default image).

     The options are as follows:

     --libxo
             Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different human
             and machine readable formats.  See xo_parse_args(3) for details
             on command line arguments.

     -a      When used with -i, include statistics about interrupts that have
             never been generated.

     -c      Repeat the display count times.  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 repeat count is specified,
             and -w is specified, the default is infinity, otherwise the
             default is one.

     -f      Report on the number fork(2), vfork(2) and rfork(2) system calls
             since system startup, and the number of pages of virtual memory
             involved in each.

     -h      Changes memory columns into more easily human readable form.  The
             default if standard output is a terminal device.

     -H      Changes memory columns into straight numbers.  The default if
             standard output is not a terminal device (such as a script).

     -i      Report on the number of interrupts taken by each device since
             system startup.

     -M      Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
             core.

     -N      If -M is also specified, extract the name list from the specified
             system instead of the default, which is the kernel image the
             system has booted from.

     -m      Report on the usage of kernel dynamic memory allocated using
             malloc(9) by type.

     -n      Change the maximum number of disks to display from the default of
             2.

     -o      Display a list of virtual memory objects in the system and the
             resident memory used by each object.

     -P      Report per-cpu system/user/idle cpu statistics.

     -p      Specify which types of devices to display.  There are three
             different categories of devices:

             device type:
                     da         Direct Access devices
                     sa         Sequential Access devices
                     printer    Printers
                     proc       Processor devices
                     worm       Write Once Read Multiple devices
                     cd         CD devices
                     scanner    Scanner devices
                     optical    Optical Memory devices
                     changer    Medium Changer devices
                     comm       Communication devices
                     array      Storage Array devices
                     enclosure  Enclosure Services devices
                     floppy     Floppy devices

             interface:
                     IDE        Integrated Drive Electronics devices
                     SCSI       Small Computer System Interface devices
                     other      Any other device interface

             passthrough:
                     pass       Passthrough devices

             The user must specify at least one device type, and may specify
             at most one device type from each category.  Multiple device
             types in a single device type statement must be separated by
             commas.

             Any number of -p arguments may be specified on the command line.
             All -p arguments are ORed together to form a matching expression
             against which all devices in the system are compared.  Any device
             that fully matches any -p argument will be included in the vmstat
             output, up to two devices, or the maximum number of devices
             specified by the user.

     -s      Display the contents of the sum structure, giving the total
             number of several kinds of paging related events which have
             occurred since system startup.

     -w      Pause wait seconds between each display.  If no repeat wait
             interval is specified, the default is 1 second.  The vmstat
             command will accept and honor a non-integer number of seconds.

     -z      Report on memory used by the kernel zone allocator, uma(9), by
             zone.

     The wait and count arguments may be given after their respective flags at
     any point on the command line before the disks argument(s), or without
     their flags, as the final argument(s).  The latter form is accepted for
     backwards compatibility, but it is preferred to use the forms with -w and
     -c to avoid ambiguity.

     By default, vmstat displays the following information:

     procs   Information about the number of threads in various states:

             r       running or in run queue
             b       blocked for resources (i/o, paging, etc.)
             w       swapped out

     memory  Information about the usage of virtual and real memory.

             Mapped virtual memory is a sum of all of the virtual pages
             belonging to mapped virtual memory objects.  Note that the entire
             memory object's size is considered mapped even if only a subset
             of the object's pages are currently mapped.  This statistic is
             not related to the active page queue which is used to track real
             memory.

             avm     mapped virtual memory (previously called active in vmstat
                     output)
             fre     size of the free list

     page    Information about page faults and paging activity.  These are
             given in units per second.

             flt     total number of page faults
             re      pages reactivated (found in laundry or inactive queues)
             pi      pages paged in
             po      pages paged out
             fr      pages freed
             sr      pages scanned by page daemon

     disks   Disk operations per second (this field is system dependent).
             Typically paging will be split across the available drives.  The
             header of the field is the first two characters of the disk name
             and the unit number.  If more than two disk drives are configured
             in the system, vmstat displays only the first two drives, unless
             the user specifies the -n argument to increase the number of
             drives displayed.  This will probably cause the display to exceed
             80 columns, however.  To force vmstat to display specific drives,
             their names may be supplied on the command line.  The vmstat
             utility defaults to show disks first, and then various other
             random devices in the system to add up to two devices, if there
             are that many devices in the system.  If devices are specified on
             the command line, or if a device type matching pattern is
             specified (see above), vmstat will only display the given devices
             or the devices matching the pattern, and will not randomly select
             other devices in the system.

     faults  Trap/interrupt rates per second.

             in      device interrupts (including clock interrupts)
             sy      system calls
             cs      cpu context switches

     cpu     Breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time.

             us      user time for normal and low priority processes
             sy      system and interrupt time
             id      cpu idle

FILES
     /boot/kernel/kernel  default kernel namelist
     /dev/kmem            default memory file

EXAMPLES
     The command:
           vmstat -w 5
     will print what the system is doing every five seconds.

     The command:
           vmstat -p da -p cd -w 1
     will tell vmstat to select the first two direct access or CDROM devices
     and display statistics on those devices, as well as other systems
     statistics every second.

SEE ALSO
     fstat(1), netstat(1), nfsstat(1), ps(1), systat(1), libmemstat(3),
     libxo(3), xo_parse_args(3), gstat(8), iostat(8), pstat(8), sysctl(8),
     malloc(9), uma(9)

     The sections starting with ``Interpreting system activity'' in Installing
     and Operating 4.3BSD.

HISTORY
     The vmstat utility first appeared in 4.3BSD.

BUGS
     The -c and -w options are only available with the default output.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          July 26, 2020         FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6

Command Section

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