System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration

How to Display Virtual Memory Statistics (vmstat)

Collect virtual memory statistics by using the vmstat command with a time interval in seconds.


$ vmstat n

n is the interval in seconds between reports.

Example—Displaying Virtual Memory Statistics

The following example shows the vmstat display of statistics gathered at five-second intervals.


$ vmstat 5
 procs    memory            page             disk      faults     cpu
r b w  swap free re  mf  pi  po  fr de sr f0 s3 -- --  in  sy  cs us sy  id
0 0 8 28312  668  0   9   2   0   1  0  0  0  1  0  0  10  61  82  1  2  97
0 0 3 31940  248  0  10  20   0  26  0 27  0  4  0  0  53 189 191  6  6  88
0 0 3 32080  288  3  19  49   6  26  0 15  0  9  0  0  75 415 277  6 15  79
0 0 3 32080  256  0  26  20   6  21  0 12  1  6  0  0 163 110 138  1  3  96
0 1 3 32060  256  3  45  52  28  61  0 27  5 12  0  0 195 191 223  7 11  82
0 0 3 32056  260  0   1   0   0   0  0  0  0  0  0  0   4  52  84  0  1  99