Processing vxstat to read into R

I got bored with my iostat data, and found some interesting looking vxstat logs to browse with the Cockcroft Headroom Plot. To get them into a regular format I wrote a short Awk script that is shown below. It skips the first record, adds a custom header and drops the time field into the first column.

# process vxstat file into regular csv format
BEGIN { skipping=1; printf("time,vol,reads,writes,breads,bwrites,tread,twrite\n"); }
NR < 4 {next}   # skip header
NF > 0 && skipping==1 {next} # skip first record of totals since boot
NF == 0 {skipping=0}
NF == 5 {time=$0}
NF == 8 {printf("%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n",time,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);}

It turns a file that looks like this:

                        OPERATIONS           BLOCKS        AVG TIME(ms)
TYP NAME              READ     WRITE      READ     WRITE   READ  WRITE 

Mon May 01 19:00:01 2000
vol home             88159    346799  17990732   3680604   13.7   15.6 
vol local            64308    103869   3848746    410899    6.0   22.0 
vol orahome          80240    208372  18931823    886870   11.9   21.1 
vol rootvol         336544    537741  21325442   8566302    4.8  323.1 
vol swapvol          32857       339   4199304     58160   13.8   22.5 
vol usr             396221    174834  11766646   2872832    3.5  547.6 
vol var             316340   1688518  25138480  19275428   11.1   53.7 

Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000
vol home                 1        28         4       129   10.0   34.3 
vol local                0         2         0         8    0.0  330.0 
vol orahome              4        20        24        88   10.0   84.0 
vol rootvol              0        80         0       720    0.0    9.4 
vol swapvol              0         0         0         0    0.0    0.0 
vol usr                  0         1         0        16    0.0   20.0 
vol var                  4       235        54      2498   15.0   13.7 

... and so on

into

% awk -f vx.awk < vxstat.out
time,vol,reads,writes,breads,bwrites,tread,twrite
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,home,1,28,4,129,10.0,34.3
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,local,0,2,0,8,0.0,330.0
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,orahome,4,20,24,88,10.0,84.0
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,rootvol,0,80,0,720,0.0,9.4
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,swapvol,0,0,0,0,0.0,0.0
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,usr,0,1,0,16,0.0,20.0
Mon May 01 19:00:31 2000,var,4,235,54,2498,15.0,13.7
... and so on

This can easily be read into R and plotted using

> vx <- read.csv("~/vxstat.csv", header=T)
> vxhome <- vx[vx$vol=="home",]
> chp(vxhome$reads,vxhome$treads)

One of the files I tried was quite long, half a million lines. It loaded into R in fifteen seconds, and the subsequent analysis operations didn't take too long. Try that with a spreadsheet... :-)