delay

The delay between updates in seconds. If no delay is specified, only one report is printed with the average values since boot.

count

Number of updates. In absence of count, when delay is defined, default is infinite.

-a, --active

Display active and inactive memory, given a 2.5.41 kernel or better.

-f, --forks

The -f switch displays the number of forks since boot. This includes the fork, vfork, and clone system calls, and is equivalent to the total number of tasks created. Each process is represented by one or more tasks, depending on thread usage. This display does not repeat.

-m, --slabs

Displays slabinfo.

-n, --one-header

Display the header only once rather than periodically.

-s, --stats

Displays a table of various event counters and memory statistics. This display does not repeat.

-d, --disk

Report disk statistics (2.5.70 or above required).

-D, --disk-sum

Report some summary statistics about disk activity.

-p, --partition device

Detailed statistics about partition (2.5.70 or above required).

-S, --unit character

Switches outputs between 1000 (k), 1024 (K), 1000000 (m), or 1048576 (M) bytes. Note this does not change the swap (si/so) or block (bi/bo) fields.

-t, --timestamp

Append timestamp to each line

-w, --wide

Wide output mode (useful for systems with higher amount of memory, where the default output mode suffers from unwanted column breakage). The output is wider than 80 characters per line.

-y, --no-first

Omits first report with statistics since system boot.

-V, --version

Display version information and exit.

-h, --help

Display help and exit.

Procs

r: The number of runnable processes (running or waiting for run time).
b: The number of processes blocked waiting for I/O to complete.

Memory

These are affected by the --unit option.

swpd: the amount of swap memory used.
free: the amount of idle memory.
buff: the amount of memory used as buffers.
cache: the amount of memory used as cache.
inact: the amount of inactive memory.  (-a option)
active: the amount of active memory.  (-a option)

Swap

These are affected by the --unit option.

si: Amount of memory swapped in from disk (/s).
so: Amount of memory swapped to disk (/s).

IO

bi: Kibibyte received from a block device (KiB/s).
bo: Kibibyte sent to a block device (KiB/s).

System

in: The number of interrupts per second, including the clock.
cs: The number of context switches per second.

CPU

These are percentages of total CPU time.

us: Time spent running non-kernel code.  (user time, including nice time)
sy: Time spent running kernel code.  (system time)
id: Time spent idle.  Prior to Linux 2.5.41, this includes IO-wait time.
wa: Time spent waiting for IO.  Prior to Linux 2.5.41, included in idle.
st: Time stolen from a virtual machine.  Prior to Linux 2.6.11, unknown.
gu: Time spent running KVM guest code (guest time, including guest nice).

Reads

total: Total reads completed successfully
merged: grouped reads (resulting in one I/O)
sectors: Sectors read successfully
ms: milliseconds spent reading

Writes

total: Total writes completed successfully
merged: grouped writes (resulting in one I/O)
sectors: Sectors written successfully
ms: milliseconds spent writing

IO

cur: I/O in progress
s: seconds spent for I/O

reads: Total number of reads issued to this partition
read sectors: Total read sectors for partition
writes : Total number of writes issued to this partition
requested writes: Total number of write requests made for partition

Slab mode shows statistics per slab, for more information about this information see slabinfo(5)

cache: Cache name
num: Number of currently active objects
total: Total number of available objects
size: Size of each object
pages: Number of pages with at least one active object

vmstat requires read access to files under /proc. The -m requires read access to /proc/slabinfo which may not be available to standard users. Mount options for /proc such as subset=pid may also impact what is visible.

Please send bug reports to procps@freelists.org">