Dstat is a versatile replacement for vmstat, iostat, netstat and ifstat. Dstat overcomes some of their limitations and adds some extra features, more counters and flexibility. Dstat is handy for monitoring systems during performance tuning tests, benchmarks or troubleshooting.

Dstat allows you to view all of your system resources in real-time, you can eg. compare disk utilization in combination with interrupts from your IDE controller, or compare the network bandwidth numbers directly with the disk throughput (in the same interval).

Dstat gives you detailed selective information in columns and clearly indicates in what magnitude and unit the output is displayed. Less confusion, less mistakes. And most importantly, it makes it very easy to write plugins to collect your own counters and extend in ways you never expected.

Dstat's output by default is designed for being interpreted by humans in real-time, however you can export details to CSV output to a file to be imported later into Gnumeric or Excel to generate graphs.

Combines vmstat, iostat, ifstat, netstat information and more
Shows stats in exactly the same timeframe
Enable/order counters as they make most sense during analysis/troubleshooting
Modular design
Written in python so easily extendable for the task at hand
Easy to extend, add your own counters (please contribute those)
Includes many external plugins to show how easy it is to add counters
Can summarize grouped block/network devices and give total numbers
Can show interrupts per device
Very accurate timeframes, no timeshifts when system is stressed
Shows exact units and limits conversion mistakes
Indicate different units with different colors
Show intermediate results when delay > 1
Allows to export CSV output, which can be imported in Gnumeric and Excel to make graphs

Here are the existing plugins, send me your own plugins.

[dag@moria ~]# dstat --list
internal:
        aio, cpu, cpu24, disk, disk24, disk24old, epoch, fs, int, int24, io, ipc, load, lock, 
        mem, net, page, page24, proc, raw, socket, swap, swapold, sys, tcp, time, udp, unix, 
        vm
/usr/share/dstat:
        battery, battery-remain, cpufreq, dbus, disk-recsize, disk-tps, disk-util, dstat, 
        dstat-cpu, dstat-ctxt, dstat-mem, fan, freespace, gpfs, gpfs-ops, helloworld, 
        innodb-buffer, innodb-io, innodb-ops, lustre, mem-adv, memcache-hits, mysql-io, 
        mysql-keys, mysql5-cmds, mysql5-conn, mysql5-io, mysql5-keys, net-packets, nfs3, 
        nfs3-ops, nfsd3, nfsd3-ops, ntp, pcap-ssh, postfix, power, proc-count, proc-count2, 
        proc-count3, qmail, rpc, rpcd, sendmail, snooze, squid, test, thermal, top-bio, 
        top-bio-adv, top-childwait, top-cpu, top-cpu-adv, top-cpu2, top-cpu3, top-cputime, 
        top-cputime-avg, top-int, top-io, top-io-adv, top-latency, top-latency-avg, top-mem, 
        top-oom, top-tcp-ports, utmp, vm-memctl, vmk-hba, vmk-int, vmk-nic, vz-cpu, vz-io, 
        vz-ubc, wifi

See the for options and a summary of each external plugin.

Add /etc/dstat.conf configuration file to customize
Create a complete counter/object model structure
Interface directly with rrdtool for real-time graphing
Create client-server application model for remote graphing
See for more details

[dag@moria ~]$ dstat --help
Usage: dstat [-afv] [options..] [delay [count]]
Versatile tool for generating system resource statistics

Dstat options:
  -c, --cpu              enable cpu stats
     -C 0,3,total           include cpu0, cpu3 and total
  -d, --disk             enable disk stats
     -D total,hda           include hda and total
  -g, --page             enable page stats
  -i, --int              enable interrupt stats
     -I 5,eth2              include int5 and interrupt used by eth2
  -l, --load             enable load stats
  -m, --mem              enable memory stats
  -n, --net              enable network stats
     -N eth1,total          include eth1 and total
  -p, --proc             enable process stats
  -r, --io               enable io stats (I/O requests completed)
  -s, --swap             enable swap stats
     -S swap1,total         include swap1 and total
  -t, --time             enable time/date output
  -T, --epoch            enable time counter (seconds since epoch)
  -y, --sys              enable system stats

  --aio                  enable aio stats
  --fs, --filesystem     enable fs stats
  --ipc                  enable ipc stats
  --lock                 enable lock stats
  --raw                  enable raw stats
  --socket               enable socket stats
  --tcp                  enable tcp stats
  --udp                  enable udp stats
  --unix                 enable unix stats
  --vm                   enable vm stats

  --plugin-name          enable plugins by plugin name (see manual)
  --list                 list all available plugins

  -a, --all              equals -cdngy (default)
  -f, --full             automatically expand -C, -D, -I, -N and -S lists
  -v, --vmstat           equals -pmgdsc -D total

  --float                force float values on screen
  --integer              force integer values on screen

  --bw, --blackonwhite   change colors for white background terminal
  --nocolor              disable colors (implies --noupdate)
  --noheaders            disable repetitive headers
  --noupdate             disable intermediate updates
  --output file          write CSV output to file

delay is the delay in seconds between each update (default: 1)
count is the number of updates to display before exiting (default: unlimited)

Only in black and white :)

[dag@moria ~]# dstat
----total-cpu-usage---- -dsk/total- -net/total- ---paging-- ---system--
usr sys idl wai hiq siq| read  writ| recv  send|  in   out | int   csw 
  5   0  93   0   0   0| 154k   84k|   0     0 |   0     0 |1081  1116 
 13   0  87   0   0   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1036   696 
  8   0  92   0   1   0|   0  8192B|   0     0 |   0     0 |1073   936 
  0   0  99   0   0   1|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1072   940 
  1   1  97   0   2   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1252  1727 
  1   1  98   0   1   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1126  1191 
  1   0  99   0   0   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1045   908 
  0   0  99   0   0   0|   0    44k|   0     0 |   0     0 |1051   904 
  1   1  99   0   0   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1036   850 
  1   0 100   0   0   0|   0     0 |   0     0 |   0     0 |1029   757

[dag@moria ~]$ dstat -c --top-cpu -d --top-bio --top-latency
----total-cpu-usage---- -most-expensive- -dsk/total- ----most-expensive---- --highest-total--
usr sys idl wai hiq siq|  cpu process   | read  writ|  block i/o process   | latency process 
  5   0  94   0   0   0|firefox      3.6| 148k   81k|init [5]     98k   50B|pdflush        21
  2   1  98   0   0   0|wnck-applet  0.5|   0     0 |                      |at-spi-regist   5
  2   1  98   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |Xorg            1
  1   2  97   0   0   1|                |   0     0 |                      |Xorg            1
  1   1  98   0   0   0|                |   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/1    10
  1   1  97   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/0     5
  2   1  97   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |firefox       0    28k|ksoftirqd/0     5
  2   1  97   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |Xorg            1
  1   1  97   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/0     6
  2   1  98   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/0     6
  1   2  98   0   0   0|                |   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/1     8
  2   1  98   0   0   0|iwlagn       0.5|   0    72k|kjournald     0    32k|ksoftirqd/1    12
  1   1  97   0   0   0|                |   0     0 |                      |iwlagn/0        1
  1   1  98   0   0   0|firefox      0.5|   0     0 |                      |ksoftirqd/1     8

Here are 2 screenshots of older dstat versions in action.

Dstat 0.4 on a Power5 system that is being stress tested.

Dstat 0.3 (first release) on 5 RHEL3 nodes in a cluster from a Windows terminal.

If you've found a bug, please check the for known problems and send me updates if you have more information to provide.

Please also copy&paste the output of the problem, with a description, the version of the kernel and if appropriate the involved /proc entries.

Dstat has a --debug option to profile plugins and show what plugins and /proc entries are affected. Dstat also shows some more information with the --version option that might be useful. The following packages (in order of appearance) are available.

or grab the latest 0.7.3 tarball at: There's a mailinglist about dstat and some other related tools at: You can have access to the latest changes via subversion from:

The current asciidoc manual page is found here:

Subversion also holds the current documentation and example config-files, so please look there for more information. If you have improvements, found a bug or have a great idea, please mail me so we can look at how to integrate it.

I found some comments about dstat on blogs, here's what they say: