SA(8) MachTen System Manager’s Manual SA(8)

NAME
sa - print system accounting statistics

SYNOPSIS
sa [-abcdDfijkKlmnqrstu] [-v cutoff] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
The sa utility reports on, cleans up, and generally maintains system ac-
counting files.

Sa is able to condense the the information in /var/account/acct into the
summary files /var/account/savacct and /var/account/usracct, which con-
tain system statistics according to command name and login id, respec-
tively. This condensation is desirable because on a large system,
/var/account/acct can grow by hundreds of blocks per day. The summary
files are normally read before the accounting file, so that reports in-
clude all available information.

If file names are supplied, they are read instead of
/var/account/account. After each file is read, if the summary files are
being updated, an updated summary will be saved to disk. Only one report
is printed, after the last file is processed.

The labels used in the output indicate the following, except where other-
wise specified by individual options:

avio Average number of I/O operations per execution

cp Sum of user and system time, in minutes

cpu Same as cp

k CPU-time averaged core usage, in 1k units

k*sec CPU storage integral, in 1k-core seconds

re Real time, in minutes

s System time, in minutes

tio Total number of I/O operations

u User time, in minutes

The options to sa are:

-a List all command names, including those containing unprintable
characters and those used only once. By default, sa places all
names containing unprintable characters and those used only once
under the name ‘‘***other’’.

-b If printing command statistics, sort output by the sum of user
and system time divided by number of calls.

-c In addition to the number of calls and the user, system and real
times for each command, print their percentage of the total over
all commands.

-d If printing command statistics, sort by the average number of
disk I/O operations. If printing user statistics, print the av-

erage number of disk I/O operations per user.

-D If printing command statistics, sort and print by the total num-
ber of disk I/O operations.

-f Force no interactive threshold comparison with the -v option.

-i Do not read in the summary files.

-j Instead of the total minutes per category, give seconds per call.

-k If printing command statistics, sort by the cpu-time average mem-
ory usage. If printing user statistics, print the cpu-time aver-
age memory usage.

-K If printing command statistics, print and sort by the cpu-storage
integral.

-l Separate system and user time; normally they are combined.

-m Print per-user statistics rather than per-command statistics.

-n Sort by number of calls.

-q Create no output other than error messages.

-r Reverse order of sort.

-s Truncate the accounting files when done and merge their data into
the summary files.

-t For each command, report the ratio of real time to the sum of us-
er and system cpu times. If the cpu time is too small to report,
‘‘*ignore*’’ appears in this field.

-u Superseding all other flags, for each entry in the accounting
file, print the user ID, total seconds of cpu usage, total memory
usage, number of I/O operations performed, and command name.

-v cutoff
For each command used cutoff times or fewer, print the command
name and await a reply from the terminal. If the reply begins
with ‘‘y’’, add the command to the category ‘‘**junk**’’. This
flag is used to strip garbage from the report.

By default, per-command statistics will be printed. The number of calls,
the total elapsed time in minutes, total cpu and user time in minutes,
average number of I/O operations, and CPU-time averaged core usage will
be printed. If the -m option is specified, per-user statistics will be
printed, including the user name, the number of commands invoked, total
cpu time used (in minutes), total number of I/O operations, and CPU stor-
age integral for each user. If the -u option is specified, the uid, user
and system time (in seconds), CPU storage integral, I/O usage, and com-
mand name will be printed for each entry in the accounting data file.

If the -u flag is specified, all flags other than -q are ignored. If the
-m flag is specified, only the -b, -d, -i, -k, -q, and -s flags are hon-
ored.

The sa utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

FILES
/var/account/acct raw accounting data file
/var/account/savacct per-command accounting summary database
/var/account/usracct per-user accounting summary database

SEE ALSO
ac(8), acct(5), accton(8), lastcomm(1)

BUGS
The number of options to this program is absurd, especially considering
that there’s not much logic behind their lettering.

The field labels should be more consistent.

NetBSD’s VM system does not record the CPU storage integral.

CAVEATS
While the behavior of the options in this version of sa was modeled after
the original version, there are some intentional differences and undoubt-
edly some unintentional ones as well. In particular, the -q option has
been added, and the -m option now understands more options than it used
to.

The formats of the summary files created by this version of sa are very
different than the those used by the original version. This is not con-
sidered a problem, however, because the accounting record format has
changed as well (since user ids are now 32 bits).

HISTORY
Sa was written for from the specification provided by various systems’
manual pages. Its date of origin is unknown to the author.

AUTHOR
Chris G. Demetriou, cgd@postgres.berkeley.edu

NetBSD February 25, 1994 3