Forum OpenACS Q&A: linux disk activity info

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1: linux disk activity info
Posted by Jonathan Ellis on 06/17/02 11:40 PM
top shows my server running at about 60% cpu usage but uptime says I
have a load of over 5.  Where is uptime getting its information?  I
suspect my WAL may be trying to write more than the poor 7200 RPM IDE
disk can handle but the only disk stats a google search turned up are
the ones in proc/stat which are neither readable nor comprehensive.

is there something like top for disk activity?

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2: Response to linux disk activity info (response to 1)
Posted by Patrick Giagnocavo on 06/18/02 12:14 AM
Ignore output from both top and uptime.

Instead, run

"vmstat 5"

to get a continuously update list of real kernel statistics, updated every 5 seconds.  The man page tells you what each column means.  Look for the number of disk transactions, and paging activity.

vmstat -s (or -S, I forget which) will give you useful information on various stats of your system.  For disks, look at the cache numbers for file system lookups (this is usually at the bottom of the output).

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3: Response to linux disk activity info (response to 1)
Posted by Mike Sisk on 06/18/02 03:25 PM
There's also iostat and on Red Hat, procinfo.