IFSTAT(8)

📦
version 7.3.0 · 2 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, centos-stream 10, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

💖 IFSTAT(8) — ifstat 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for ifstat, the handy utility to read network interface statistics. it lives in the Linux manual section 8 and it is genuinely one of my faves, no cap.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ifstat [ OPTIONS ] [ INTERFACE_LIST ]

INTERFACE_LIST := INTERFACE_LIST | interface

yes girl, that grammar line is recursive and yes, it's giving iconic. you just keep stacking interfaces in the list. periodt.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

ifstat neatly prints out network interface statistics. it's tidy like that. 💅

here's the lil trick that makes it special: the utility keeps records of the previous data displayed in history files, and by default it only shows the difference between the last call and the current call. so you're not staring at giant counters, you're seeing what changed. ate.

the location of those history files defaults to /tmp/.ifstat.u$UID — but bestie, you can override it with the IFSTAT_HISTORY environment variable. 🎀

similarly, the default location for xstat (extended stats) is /tmp/.<xstat name>_ifstat.u$UID.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h, --help — show a summary of options. your little helper 🫶
  • -V, --version — show the version of the program.
  • -a, --ignore — ignore the history file. like, forget it ever existed 💀
  • -d, --scan=SECS — sample statistics every SECS seconds.
  • -e, --errors — show errors.
  • -n, --nooutput — don't display any output. just update the history file only. silent but productive ✨
  • -r, --reset — reset history.
  • -s, --noupdate — don't update the history file.
  • -t, --interval=SECS — report the average over the last SECS seconds.
  • -z, --zeros — show entries with zero activity. let the quiet interfaces have their moment 🌸
  • -j, --json — display results in JSON format. machine-readable queen 👑
  • -p, --pretty — if combined with --json, pretty print the output. that's the glow-up fr fr 💅
  • -x, --extended=TYPE — show extended stats of TYPE. the supported types are:
    • cpu_hits — counts only packets that went via the CPU.
not me listing every single one of these because every single one of these matters. keep them all, bestie.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • IFSTAT_HISTORY — if set, its value is interpreted as an alternate history file path.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

💜 AUTHOR 💜

ifstat was written by Alexey Kuznetsov <kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru>.

this manual page was written by Petr Sabata <contyk@redhat.com>.

and that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by iproute2, dated 28 Oct 2015. go check your interfaces, they're doing great, i'm obsessed with them 🦋✨💖

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