Bug 137414

Summary: Error in vmstat manpage (bi vs. bo column)
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Reporter: Michael Paesold <mpaesold>
Component: procpsAssignee: Karel Zak <kzak>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.0   
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2005-05-20 03:25:49 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Bug Blocks: 132991    

Description Michael Paesold 2004-10-28 12:30:05 UTC 
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Opera/7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U)  [en]

Description of problem:
The manpage for vmstat gets the field description of "bi" and "bo" 
wrong, here it says:

bi: Blocks sent to a block device (blocks/s).
bo: Blocks received from a block device (blocks/s).

But it should be the other way round, really:
bi = blocks in (from CPU perspective)
bo = blocks out (from CPU perspective)

Test youself, that is what vmstat really displays:
bi: Blocks received from a block device (blocks/s).
bo: Blocks sent to a block device (blocks/s).

This seems to be wrong in every release of RedHat linux we have.
It is correct on some other unices.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
procps-2.0.17-10

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Look at the manpage for vmstat and look at the FIELDS description, 
specifically io -- bi and bo;
then test yourself on an otherwise idle system:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/testfile bs=1024 count=200000 & vmstat 1 10

You will clearly see, that the manual page is wrong.
Comment 1 Karel Zak 2004-12-07 12:30:24 UTC 
It will be fixed in RHEL-3-U5.
Comment 2 Dennis Gregorovic 2005-05-20 03:25:49 UTC 
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2005-156.html