Display previously captured data

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The -o and -f options (write and read to/from user given data files) allow you to visualize the behavior of your machine in two independent steps. This consumes less resources during the problem-reproduction period.

You can use a separate machine to analyze the data by transferring the file because the collected binary file keeps all data the sar command needs.

# sar -o /tmp/sar.out 2 5 > /dev/null

The above command runs the sar command in the background, collects system activity data at 2-second intervals for 5 intervals, and stores the (unformatted) sar data in the /tmp/sar.out file. The redirection of standard output is used to avoid a screen output.

The following command extracts CPU information from the file and outputs a formatted report to standard output:

# sar -f/tmp/sar.out

AIX ses12 1 6 000126C5D600    04/08/08

System configuration: lcpu=2  mode=Capped

20:17:00    %usr    %sys    %wio   %idle   physc
20:18:00       0       1       0      99    1.00
20:19:00       0       1       0      99    1.00
20:20:00       0       1       0      99    1.00
20:21:01       0       1       0      99    1.00
20:22:00       0       0       0      99    1.00

Average        0       1       0      99    1.00

The captured binary data file keeps all information needed for the reports. Every possible sar report could therefore be investigated. This also allows to display the processor-specific information of an SMP system on a single processor system.