title: Sar (Unix)
text: # Sar (Unix)
  
  System Activity Report (sar) is a Unix System V-derived system monitor command used to report on various system loads, including CPU activity, memory/paging, interrupts, device load, network and swap space utilization. Sar uses /proc filesystem for gathering information.
  
  ## Platform support
  
  Sar was originally developed for the Unix System V operating system; it is available in AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and other System V based operating systems but it is not available for macOS or FreeBSD. Prior to 2013 there was a bsdsar tool, but it is now deprecated.
  
  Most Linux distributions provide sar utility through the sysstat package.
  
  ## Syntax
  
  ### -f
  
      filename Uses filename as the data source for sar. The default is the current daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd.
  
  ### -e
  
      time Selects data up to time. The default is 18:00.
  
  ### -i
  
      sec Selects data at intervals as close as possible to sec seconds.
  
  ## Sysstat package
  
  Additional to sar command, Linux sysstat package in Debian, RedHat Enterprise Linux and SuSE provides additional reporting tools:
  
  * sar(1): Collect, report, or save system activity information. – Linux User Commands Manual
  * sa1(8): Collect and store binary data in the system activity daily data file. – Linux Administration and Privileged Commands Manual
  * sa2(8): shell variant of sar, supporting the same flags as sar command which write a daily report in the /var/log/sa directory. – Linux Administration and Privileged Commands Manual
  * sadf(1): , similar to sar but can write its data in different formats (CSV, XML, etc.). This is useful to load performance data into a database, or import them in a spreadsheet to make graphs.
  * iostat(1): reports basic CPU statistics and input/output statistics for devices, partitions and network filesystems. – Linux User Commands Manual
  * mpstat(1): reports individual or combined processor related statistics. – Linux User Commands Manual
  * pidstat(1): reports statistics for Linux tasks (processes) : I/O, CPU, memory, etc. – Linux User Commands Manual
  * nfsiostat(1): reports input/output statistics for network filesystems (NFS). – Linux User Commands Manual
  * cifsiostat(1): reports I/O statistics for CIFS resources. – Linux User Commands Manual
  