Package: sysstat Version: 12.1.7-1 Severity: wishlist Tags: upstream As of 12.1.2 iostat reports discard statistics separately from writes: http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-orange.fr/changelog.html
This can be a useful feature; however, it increases the width to the point that lines start to wrap even on a 172-column display, where before they did not; it seems to be 181 characters wide now, vs 130 without the discard columns. This wrapping is distracting and reduces the number of prior measurements that can be seen before scrolling offscreen. Moreover, the six discard columns are present even on devices which can't support discard, or which are not mounted with discard. Even using a resizeable terminal on a screen which can accommodate the width, these are wasted space - in the middle of the window, so you can't just push it off the edge of the screen - and they make it harder to keep an eye on the more-useful utilization percentage. Ideally it'd be possible to cut the discard columns entirely with a configuration option, and to default to this option if no devices are mounted with discard. It might also be good if it didn't output a zero value (just a tab) for devices not supporting discard, even if others do; a zero suggests the the devices support discard, but there are no discards currently, and makes the overall output harder to read. This could be extended to writes for read-only devices. However, I could see the potential for this interfering with graphing which relies on the current output. Best regards, -- Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry https://www.greenreaper.co.uk/ <http://www.greenreaper.co.uk/>
