SAR + IOSTAT and CCISS devices

[eduardo_41]

Hi!

We're using SuSE Linux Enterprise 8 + SP3 + PSP 7.10 + DL 380 G3 .

When I type 'sar -d' I get: "Requested activities not available in file", and 'iostat' gives doesn't list the devices.

I've checked /usr/src/linux/.config and it have 'CONFIG_BLK_STATS=y'.

Then... I tried installing SLES8+SP3 on a new PC (with IDE disks) and I got the sar counters... the "problem" is only with proliant servers.

Is CCISS devices "supported" on SAR / IOSTAT ? If not, which utilities can I use to get disk statistics ?

Thank you.
Eduardo

[Eric van Dijken]

Did you try "sar -D" also?

I use ATsar, which can be found at http://ftp.atcomputing.nl/pub/tools/linux/

That one work for me (RHES3 U4)

[eduardo_41]

Hi, thanks for reply!

SAR -D is invalid, there is no "-D" parameter.

I'm using SAR 4.0.3.

About atsar, it only work with -D, and it showed a 130.0 Kbyt/s.

So, am I getting 130MB/s or 130KB/s (very slow!) ???

Thanks again.
Eduardo

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

iostat works for me on DL360G3 [RHEL2.1 upd 6]

[Eric van Dijken]

You are right, sar doesn't have the -D option. Only ATsar uses it.

But even sar (sysstat version 5.0.5) works on my system.

The output returned 130Kb/s, is the usage of the disk. If nothing is happening on the disk. It may even be 0Kb/s.

[eduardo_41]

Hi Eric,

But I'm thinking it's a problem with SuSE Enterprise 8 (with or without SP3) and CCISS devices.

Is anyone here using SLES8 and Proliant DL servers ? If yes, does sar -d work ? With DL380G3 it doesn't work.

Thanks,
Eduardo

[Jared Middleton]

Well I can say that it's not just SuSE. I have the same strange situation on 3 ProLiant servers running Red Hat Linux 7.3... sar -d doesn't work anymore.

# sar -d
Requested activities not available in file

It worked on all 3 when I first set them up 3+ years ago. When I posted regarding this problem in July 2004, it was not working on on one of my servers. Today it is not working on all 3 servers!

HP/Compaq ProLiant DL580G2 (Live and Test)
HP/Compaq ProLiant DL380G3 (Web Server)
Red Hat Linux 7.3 Professional
Kernel: 2.4.20-20.7bigmem
Compaq Smart Array 5312

# sar -V
sysstat version 4.0.3

On all 3 Linux machines, the sa data collection stuff is running every
10 minutes (via cron):
$ cat /etc/cron.d/sysstat
# run system activity accounting tool every 10 minutes */10 *
* * * root /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1 # generate a daily summary of
process accounting at 23:53
53 23 * * * root /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -A

A plain "sar" (or sar -A) is correctly reporting current stats for CPU,
network, etc. on each machine. However, sa appears to be capturing all expected data EXCEPT the disk/block device
(-d) stats. I can't figure out why.

"iostat -d" also comes up blank:
# iostat -d
Linux 2.4.20-20.7bigmem (live) 02/15/2005

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn

Rebooting doesn't help.
What do I need to do to resume capturing "sar" block device data?

Jared Middleton

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

iostat -d & sar -d do work for me with DL380G3 and RHEL2.1 [kernel 2.4.9-e.57.smp] and on DL360G3 with RHEL3.0 [2.4.21-27.ELsmp]