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.
It will be fixed in RHEL-3-U5.
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