System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration

ProcedureHow to Display Disk Utilization Information (iostat)

  1. You can display disk utilization information by using the iostat command with a time interval in seconds.


    $ iostat 5
         tty          fd0           sd3          nfs1         nfs31          cpu
    tin tout kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv  us sy wt id
      0    1   0   0  410    3   0   29    0   0    9    3   0   47   4  2  0 94

    The first line of output shows the statistics since the last time the system was booted. Each subsequent line shows the interval statistics. The default is to show statistics for the terminal (tty), disks (fd and sd), and CPU (cpu).


Example 13–3 Displaying Disk Utilization Information

The following example shows disk statistics that were gathered every five seconds.


$ iostat 5
tty        sd0           sd6           nfs1         nfs49           cpu
tin tout kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv  us sy wt id
 0    0   1   0   49    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0   15   0  0  0 100
 0   47   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16  44   6  132    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  1 99
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   3   1   23    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  1 99
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100
 0   16   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0   0  0  0 100

The following table describes the fields in the output of the iostat n command.

Device Type 

Field Name 

Description 

Terminal 

Device Type 

 
 

tin

Number of characters in the terminal input queue 

 

tout

Number of characters in the terminal output queue 

Disk 

Device Type 

 
 

bps

Blocks per second 

 

tps

Transactions per second 

 

serv

Average service time, in milliseconds 

CPU 

Device Type 

 
 

us

In user mode 

 

sy

In system mode 

 

wt

Waiting for I/O 

 

id

Idle