SA2(8)

📦
version 12.8.0 · 7 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling

💅 SA2(8) — your girl's guide to sa2

okay so real talk, we're in the Linux User's Manual, section 8 (that's the admin-commands section, iykyk), and today's main character is sa2. buckle up bestie 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

sa2 — makes a report out of the current standard system activity daily data file. that's it, that's the gig 💖

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/usr/lib/sa/sa2

literally just that path, no cap. she lives at /usr/lib/sa/sa2 and she takes flags (more on that in a sec) 🦋

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so sa2 is a shell procedure variant of the sar command — like, sar's cute cousin who's got her own whole thing going on. what she does is write a daily report into the sarDD file, or the sarYYYYMMDD file, and here's the decoder ring:

  • YYYY = the current year
  • MM = the current month
  • DD = the current day

by default that report is saved in the /var/log/sa directory. iconic. 💅

and she's not just a report-girlie, she's also a little bit of a cleaner: sa2 will also remove reports more than one week old, by default. yes bestie, she declutters for you 🧹✨ but like — you can keep reports for a longer (or a shorter) period by setting the HISTORY environment variable. that's the whole vibe check. read the sysstat(5) manual page for details, because yours truly is not gonna recite it all here 🙈

oh and also — the sa2 command accepts most of the flags and parameters of the sar command. so all your sar muscle memory? transfers. slay. 🔥

and the big one: sa2 is designed to be started automatically by the cron command. she's a set-it-and-forget-it queen 👑

⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

wanna run sa2 daily? obviously. place the following entry in your root crontab file:

5 19 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -A

and that, by default, will generate a daily report called sarDD in the /var/log/sa directory — where the DD parameter is a number representing the day of the month. cute right? 🍓

ngl, that's the root crontab specifically — don't go putting it in your own user crontab and then wondering why nothing happened 😭

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /var/log/sa/sarDD
  • /var/log/sa/sarYYYYMMDD

these are the standard system activity daily report files, and this is their default location. again for the people in the back: YYYY stands for the current year, MM for the current month, and DD for the current day. 💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Sebastien Godard (sysstat <at> orange.fr) — thank you for your service king 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

and if you wanna go deeper (you do, I know you):

okay that's the whole page!! 💖 this one shipped from the Linux release of the manual, dated AUGUST 2023, and it's filed under SA2(8) — so go forth, cron her up, and let the daily reports come to you. mwah 💋✨

📦 where this page comes from