Manual Pages  — VMSTAT

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	page reclaims (simulating reference bits)
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

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