Dstat helps you figure out why your computer is running slow

Brian Jackson, 123RF

Diagnostics

Valentin Höbel

Dstat helps identify bottlenecks that hide in the complex interplay of CPU, hard drive and network. Thanks to an extensive number of parameters, the program is also suitable for monitoring a server.

Linux users have a large repertoire of tools at their fingertips for figuring out the current workload on system resources. You may already have used tools such as iostat and netstat . These and other tools are either intended only for professionals or solely for the purpose of displaying parts of the desired parameters. The dstat tool, on the other hand, can be used by both novice and experienced administrators, because it offers well-structured and colorful information output. Therefore, with only a little practice, a less experienced user can detect processes causing significant loads on the system.

Dag Johan Maarten Wieers from Belgium was the primary developer for dstat, which is written in Python. Originally, he intended for the program to bring the functions of the well-known tools ifstat , iostat , netstat , and vmstat together in one place to give the user a comprehensive view of network disk and memory status.

The tool also includes numerous extensions that display metrics for many different applications. Although the kernel provides the standard measurement values in the usual way via a virtual proc filesystem, the software has its own modules to read the measurement values for applications.

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