Re: sysstat: iostat is unusable on kfreebsd-* (no disk-related stats)

[Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson@gisladisker.se>]

måndag den 28 mars 2011 klockan 16:50 skrev Steve Schnepp detta:
> Package: sysstat
> Version: 9.0.6.1-2
> Severity: normal
> 
> On the kfreebsd-* architecture, iostat doesn't output any disk-related stats.

The problem here is that GNU/kFreeBSD has no compatibility layer present
in "/proc/diskstats". Therefore neither "iostat", nor "iostat ad0", can
produce any useful information.

There are three possible solution paths:

  1) Port "iostat" from FreeBSD, to be used as replacement.
     This would also need an implementation of "iostat"
     in our alternate system, thus touching "sysstat".

  2) Implement Kvm support in upstream sysstat source base.

  3) Implement support the interface "/proc/diskstats" in
     the kernel itself. It is improbable that upstream would
     like any such modification, so GNU/kFreeBSD would be on
     its own here. The number of software packages relying
     on this proc-file is by far smaller than those peeking
     into "/proc/net/*", so priority is low here.

Has someone looked into this matter before yesterday?

Best regards,
  Mats E A