Author: Sahil Suri

  What is vmstat command? In this article, we’ll demonstrate how we can use the vmstat(View memory status) command as an indispensable memory measurement tool. Although the primary intended purpose of vmstat command displays virtual memory statistics about processes, memory, and paging, it also provides information about block I/O, traps, and CPU activity. Verifying that vmstat is availability The vmstat command is installed as a part of the procps package which installs a set of utilities that are used to report system information. This package will be installed on a Red Hat based system by default even if you’ve performed a minimal type installation of the operating system. We will verify that vmstat is available in our system by executing the following commands: [sahil@linuxnix:~] $ which vmstat /usr/bin/vmstat [sahil@linuxnix:~] $ rpm -qf /usr/bin/vmstat procps-3.2.8-36.el6.x86_64 Now that we have verified that vmstat is installed on our system let’s explore some of it’s options. Getting help on vmstat command To view a list of the different options available with the vmstat command type vmstat –help. [sahil@linuxnix:~] $ vmstat --help usage: vmstat [-V] [-n] [delay [count]] -V prints version. -n causes the headers not to be reprinted regularly. -a print inactive/active page stats. -d prints disk statistics -D prints disk table -p prints disk partition statistics -s prints vm table -m prints slabinfo -t add timestamp to output -S unit size delay...