iostat output - split over multiple lines, and in multi-line table

[victorhooi]

What are your thoughts on parsing iostat output?

For example:

03/18/2015 03:17:55 AM
avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.44    0.00    0.38    0.31    0.00   98.87

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
xvdb              0.00     0.00   64.00    0.00  1584.00     0.00    49.50     0.04    0.69    0.69    0.00   0.25   1.60
xvda              0.00     0.00    0.00    3.00     0.00    12.00     8.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
xvdf              0.00   110.00    0.00   71.00     0.00  1392.00    39.21     0.03    0.39    0.00    0.39   0.39   2.80
xvde              0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
dm-0              0.00     0.00   64.00    0.00  1584.00     0.00    49.50     0.04    0.69    0.69    0.00   0.25   1.60

03/18/2015 03:17:56 AM
avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.19    0.00    0.13    0.19    0.00   99.50

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
xvdb              0.00     0.00   35.00    0.00   708.00     0.00    40.46     0.06    1.71    1.71    0.00   0.46   1.60
xvda              0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
xvdf              0.00   140.00    0.00   87.00     0.00  1472.00    33.84     0.01    0.14    0.00    0.14   0.14   1.20
xvde              0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
dm-0              0.00     0.00   35.00    0.00   708.00     0.00    40.46     0.06    1.71    1.71    0.00   0.46   1.60

03/18/2015 03:17:57 AM
avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.13    0.00    0.06    0.13    0.00   99.69

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
xvdb              0.00     0.00   18.00    0.00   456.00     0.00    50.67     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
xvda              0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
xvdf              0.00   125.00    0.00   78.00     0.00  1332.00    34.15     0.04    0.46    0.00    0.46   0.36   2.80
xvde              0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
dm-0              0.00     0.00   18.00    0.00   456.00     0.00    50.67     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00

In this case, it's a bit funny, because iostat splits the output over multiple lines.

So you need to extract the timestamp on the first line, then you need to combine that with the lines below until the next timestamp, to get one "entry" - i.e. CPU/IO stats at that one second instance, in this case.

CPU info itself is split over two lines, and then IO per device is put into a table.

Can you see sequence being used to parse something like this, or is it a bit out of scope?

[zhenjl]

Seequence is probably not the best tool for this. This is fairly structured data and a custom tool can be much more effective in extracting values.