sar

sar (System Activity Report) is a system utility command used to collect and report different metrics such us system load, CPU activity, memory (sar -r), paging (sar -B), swap (sar -S), disk (sar -d), device load and network. It is extremely useful in analyzing current and recent recorded system performance. Most Linux distributions provide sar utility binary in the sysstat package. You will also find sar in Solaris, AIX, HP-UX but not in MacOs or FreeBSD.

Binaries

• /usr/bin/sadc - System Activity Data Collector, a backend to the sar command. Writes binary log of kernel data to the /var/log/sa/saXX file, where the XX parameter indicates the current day
• /usr/bin/sadf - System Activity Data Formatter. Display data collected by sar in multiple formats.
• /usr/bin/sar.sysstat -- (sar is a symbolink link to this binary)

• /usr/bin/cifsiostat
• /usr/bin/iostat
• /usr/bin/mpstat
• /usr/bin/pidstat
• /usr/bin/tapestat

Configuration files

• Debian/Ubuntu:

/etc/default/sysstat

/etc/cron.d/sysstat (Collection interval defined in cron configuration)

/etc/sysstat/sysstat (SADC_OPTIONS)

/etc/sysstat/sysstat.ioconf

Data directory: /var/log/sysstat/

• RHEL

cat /etc/sysconfig/sysstat

cat /etc/cron.d/sysstat

Activation in Debian

• To start collection data modify file /etc/default/sysstat, changing text disabled by enabled: vi /etc/default/sysstat
• service sysstat restart (sysstat written with two "ss" do not misspell with systat with just one "s")

Modifying number of days to keep and some other options are done in /etc/sysstat/sysstat file. By default Debian collect files for HISTORY=7 7 days.

Configuration in Debian/Ubuntu

Main Configuration file: /etc/sysstat/sysstat

/etc/sysstat/sysstat Everything configured in this file, including data collection (sadc) options, except collection interval configured in crontab: /etc/cron.d/sysstat

/etc/sysstat/sysstat
HISTORY=7
COMPRESSAFTER=10
SADC_OPTIONS="-S XALL"
SA_DIR=/var/log/sysstat
ZIP="bzip2"

By default configuration SADC_OPTIONs is configure to SADC_OPTIONS="-S DISK" you can change SADC_OPTIONS default option to collect all data: SADC_OPTIONS from -S DISK to -S XALL. See man sadc for more options: { DISK | INT | IPV6 | POWER | SNMP | XDISK | ALL | XALL [,...] }.

Collection interval configuration

To change for every 10 minutes to every 2 minutes or every minute, modify cron job in file: /etc/cron.d/sysstat

5-55/10 * * * * root command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1

Every minute
* * * * * root command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1

Every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * * root command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1

Every 2 minutes
*/2 * * * * root command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1

Usage

System activity collection is provided by 4 programs, two binaries sar,sadc and two shell scriptssa1sa2.

Binaries

• /usr/bin/sar -- reporting utility -- it is a link to /usr/bin/sar.sysstat
• /usr/lib64/sa/sadc -- System activity data collector binary, a backend to the sar command. Writes binary log of kernel data to the /var/log/sa/sadd file, where the dd parameter indicates the current day

Shell scripts

• /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 or /usr/lib/sysstat/sa1Collect and store binary data
• /usr/lib64/sa/sa2 Create a report

• sar --help

Basic Usage

• Displays collected system activity, execute sar, you will have to wait some time, depending on your configuration, for getting collected information:

sar

sar -A Report all collected date

Memory

sar -r

Swap

sar -S

sar -W

Disk, filesystems

sar -d To report disk activity. See also iostat -x.

sar -F To report filesystems statistics, disk and inodes usage. Requires sadc option in /etc/sysstat/sysstat -S XDISK or -S XALL activated.

Network

sar -n ALL To show network data collected

power management

sar -m ALL To show power management data collected including cpu temperature (Requires sensors/lm-sensors utility to be installed)

Process

sar -q

Interrupts

sar -I ALL

• systemctl status sysstat
• systemctl restart sysstat

Activities

1. Install and configure sar to record system activity every 5 minutes
2. Read sysstat changelog: https://github.com/sysstat/sysstat/blob/master/CHANGES
3. Read data from day 07 to day 11: echo /var/log/sysstat/sa{07..11} | xargs -n1 sar -f
4. Read all sar collected files: for SA_FILE in $(ls -1 /var/log/sysstat/sa??); do sar -f $SA_FILE; done

Related

• collectl
• Prometheus Node exporter
• Grafana agent
• Metricbeat
• Zabbix agent
• libsensors4 package
• %nice

See also

• IO performance: iotop, iostat, sar -d, fio, nmon, vmstat -d, dd, nmon, stress
• sar, installation, sar -A, sar -F, sar -d, sar -I ALL, sar -n NFS, sar -r, sar -S, sar -W, sar -n ALL, Installing sysstat using Ansible, /etc/sysstat/sysstat, /etc/cron.d/sysstat, sar --help, Sysstat changelog, /var/log/sysstat/, cpu time steal, sargraph, isag, Telegraf
• systat FreeBSD or NetBSD commands.
• Performance: sysstat, sar, sadc, debian-sa1, sa1, sa2, iostat, nfsiostat mpstat, changelog, /usr/lib/sysstat/sadc, /etc/sysstat/sysstat, pidstat, irqstat
• Metric colletion tools: prometheus-node-exporter, metricbeat, sysstat, zabbix_agent, Icingabeat, Telegraf, AWS CloudWatch agent

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Original source: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Linux_server_administration/sar