Dstat Monitoring Tool
Monitoring Linux with dstat
Monitoring with dstat - The Versatile Resource Statistics Tool
Dstat is an alternative replacement tool for vmstat, iostat, netstat and ifstat. Dstat is a feature rich monitoring tool that is often used for tuning and benchmarking a systems performance. dstat is available in many distributions standard repositories.
Installing dstat
dstat should be available on most popular Linux distributions, directly from the standard repositories.
To install dstat on a Debian/Ubuntu/Mint system, issue the command: sudo apt install dstat
To install dstat on a openSUSE system, issue the command: zypper install dstat
To install dstat on a RHEL 8 or CentOS 8 system, you will need to install the package that provides the dstat program. An example installation can be found below on a RHEL 8 system.
RHEL 8 - CentOS 8 Install
To install dstat onto a RHEL based system, we first need to locate the package that provides the program dstat. The command for this is: "dnf provides dstat". The package needed will be identified and can then be installed.
root@rhel08a ~]# dnf provides dstat
pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-4.el8_3.x86_64 : Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) System and Monitoring Tools
Repo : rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms
Matched from:
Provide : dstat = 5.1.1-4.el8_3
From the above output we can see that dstat is provided as part of the package "pcp-system-tools"
To install this package we can issue the command: "dnf install pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-4.el8_3.x86_64" or "dnf install pcp-system-tools" for the latest version.
root@rhel08a ~]# dnf install pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-4.el8_3.x86_64
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Last metadata expiration check: 0:05:43 ago on Sun 25 Apr 2021 10:45:01 BST.
Dependencies resolved.
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Package Arch Version Repository Size
==========================================================================================================
Installing:
pcp-system-tools x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 191 k
Installing dependencies:
libuv x86_64 1:1.38.0-2.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 152 k
pcp x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 1.2 M
pcp-conf x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 50 k
pcp-libs x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 536 k
pcp-selinux x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 47 k
python3-pcp x86_64 5.1.1-3.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 167 k
python3-pip noarch 9.0.3-18.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 20 k
python3-setuptools noarch 39.2.0-6.el8 rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms 163 k
python36 x86_64 3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5cb623d7 rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms 19 k
Enabling module streams:
python36 3.6
Transaction Summary
==========================================================================================================
Install 10 Packages
Total download size: 2.5 M
Installed size: 7.3 M
Is this ok [y/N]: Downloading Packages:
(1/10): python36-3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5c 31 kB/s | 19 kB 00:00
(2/10): python3-setuptools-39.2.0-6.el8.noarch. 234 kB/s | 163 kB 00:00
(3/10): libuv-1.38.0-2.el8.x86_64.rpm 570 kB/s | 152 kB 00:00
(4/10): pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 172 kB/s | 191 kB 00:01
(5/10): pcp-conf-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 35 kB/s | 50 kB 00:01
(6/10): python3-pip-9.0.3-18.el8.noarch.rpm 98 kB/s | 20 kB 00:00
(7/10): pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 445 kB/s | 1.2 MB 00:02
(8/10): pcp-selinux-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 41 kB/s | 47 kB 00:01
(9/10): python3-pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 123 kB/s | 167 kB 00:01
(10/10): pcp-libs-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64.rpm 328 kB/s | 536 kB 00:01
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Total 586 kB/s | 2.5 MB 00:04
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1
Installing : libuv-1:1.38.0-2.el8.x86_64 1/10
Installing : pcp-selinux-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 2/10
Running scriptlet: pcp-selinux-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 2/10
Installing : pcp-conf-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 3/10
Installing : pcp-libs-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 4/10
Running scriptlet: pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 5/10
Installing : pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 5/10
Running scriptlet: pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 5/10
Installing : python3-setuptools-39.2.0-6.el8.noarch 6/10
Installing : python3-pip-9.0.3-18.el8.noarch 7/10
Installing : python36-3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5cb623d7.x86_ 8/10
Running scriptlet: python36-3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5cb623d7.x86_ 8/10
Installing : python3-pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 9/10
Installing : pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 10/10
Running scriptlet: pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 10/10
Verifying : python3-setuptools-39.2.0-6.el8.noarch 1/10
Verifying : python36-3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5cb623d7.x86_ 2/10
Verifying : pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 3/10
Verifying : libuv-1:1.38.0-2.el8.x86_64 4/10
Verifying : pcp-conf-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 5/10
Verifying : pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 6/10
Verifying : python3-pip-9.0.3-18.el8.noarch 7/10
Verifying : pcp-selinux-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 8/10
Verifying : python3-pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 9/10
Verifying : pcp-libs-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64 10/10
Installed products updated.
Installed:
libuv-1:1.38.0-2.el8.x86_64
pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
pcp-conf-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
pcp-libs-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
pcp-selinux-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
pcp-system-tools-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
python3-pcp-5.1.1-3.el8.x86_64
python3-pip-9.0.3-18.el8.noarch
python3-setuptools-39.2.0-6.el8.noarch
python36-3.6.8-2.module+el8.1.0+3334+5cb623d7.x86_64
Complete!
Now that the package has been installed, you can start "dstat" by typing "dsat" at the command line.
Custom Start-Up
You can tailor the start up of your dstat session by specifying various parameters.
To start dstat with CPU, Disk and Network, you would specify the following "-cdn".
Command Issued: "dstat -cdn"
You can also specify how many updates and frequency you want to use. This is very similar to "vmstat" command.
Example: "dstat -cdn 5 10" will give you 10 updates with a aggregated frequency of 5 seconds between output.
dstat - output to a file
To send the output to a csv file for later use we can issue the following command:
dstat --output /tmp/myoutput_stats.csv -cdn
Example output from csv file:
"Host:","rhel08a",,,,"User:","root"
"Cmdline:","dstat --output /tmp/myoutput_stats.csv -cdn",,,,"Date:","25 Apr 2021 11:43:30 BST"
"total usage",,,,,"dsk/total",,"net/total",
"total usage:usr","total usage:sys","total usage:idl","total usage:wai","total usage:stl","dsk/total:read","dsk/total:writ","net/total:recv","net/total:send"
0,0.499,99.886,0,0,0,1.998,51.941,0
0,0,99.459,0,0,0,48.980,0,0
0.500,0,100.007,0,0,0,0,52.003,0
0,0.500,99.033,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,99.948,0,0.500,0,0,51.973,0
0,0,99.523,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0.500,99.996,0,0,0,0,51.998,0
0,0,100.003,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,98.997,0,0,0,0,51.998,0
0,0,99.971,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0.500,99.527,0,0,0,0,52.014,0
0.500,0,100.001,0,0,0,0,213.002,0
Getting Help with dstat
For a full overview of all the commands and options available, you can issue the commands: "dstat -help".
