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Using DTrace to Understand Mpstat Output (Doc ID 1278725.1)

Last updated on APRIL 09, 2023

Applies to:

Solaris Operating System - Version 10 3/05 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

The mpstat(1m) command reports processor statistics in tabular form. Each row of the table represents the activity of one processor. The first table summarises all activity since boot and should be ignored for the most part. Each subsequent table summarises activity for the preceding interval.

The purpose of this document is to explain the meaning of each column displayed by mpstat(1M) and to provide some helpful DTrace one-liners or scripts that can be used to explain the values/behaviour. This is particularly useful when dealing with a performance problem.

Here's an example of an mpstat output from a two processor system




It's preferable to have the DTraceToolkit on the target system, which can be downloaded from Doc ID 1428139.1. The DTraceToolkit is a collection of over 200 useful and documented DTrace scripts.

Solution

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In this Document
Goal
Solution
 CPU/Set ID
 Minor Page Faults (minf)
 Major Page Faults (majf)
 CPU Cross calls (xcal)
 Interrupts (intr and ithr)
 Context Switches (csw)
 Involuntary Context Switches (icsw)
 Thread migrations (migr)
 Spin on mutexes (smtx)
 Spin on read/writer lock (srw)
 System calls (syscl)
 CPU utilization (usr/sys/wt/idl)
References

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