Arch Linux

tjwoosta

Member

Registered: 2008-12-18

Posts: 453

sysstat and sadc

So I installed the sysstat package from community a while back so I could use the iostat command. Today I was randomly browsing through the running processes in htop and I noticed that the command "sadc -F -L 600 6 -" was running (as root) for no apparent reason.

Im just wondering what exactly is sadc used for?  I read the man page which says its a "system activity data collector". And goes on to say ...

The sadc command samples system data a specified number of times ( count ) at a specified interval measured in seconds ( interval ). It writes in binary format to the specified outfile or to the standard output. If outfile is set to -, then sadc uses the standard system activity daily data file, the /var/log/sa/sadd file, where the dd parameter indicates the current day. By default sadc collects all the data available from the kernel. Exceptions are interrupts and disks data, for which the relevant options must be explicitly passed to sadc (see options below).

None of this really means anything to me.. What type of activity data does it collect?  Should I be concerned that its running on its own in the background without my consent or knowledge?

Ive since removed the sysstat package and killed the process. Im just curious why it was running, and should I be worried?

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: sysstat and sadc

None of this really means anything to me.. What type of activity data does it collect?  Should I be concerned that its running on its own in the background without my consent or knowledge?

It's not running on its own, it's a cronjob:

[karol@black ~]$ sp -Ql sysstat | grep cron
sysstat /etc/cron.daily/
sysstat /etc/cron.daily/sysstat
sysstat /etc/cron.hourly/
sysstat /etc/cron.hourly/sysstat

http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-oran … orial.html

make install: Installs sysstat binaries, and even create a crontab to start collecting data automatically if requested to do so at config stage.

http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/ … k/PKGBUILD

You can ask the maintainer to add a post_install note.