more information on vfs.dev.read please

[bbrendon]

Hello.

I'm having a performance issue on debian server and would like zabbix's help.

I've reviewed the docs on vfs.dev.read/write. It states sectors and operations are monitorable in the 2.6 kernel. I've found some information from "man iostat". According to iostat a sector is 512 bytes with 2.4 and newer

What is an operation?

[bbrendon]

Now I'm confused.

vfs.dev.read[hde] appears to return the total number of blocks read. Even though the manual says it should return the number of sectors. So why is there an "avg1" and "avg5" modifier? Using these appears to give "not supported" errors.

[bambin0]

I have a 2.6.9-5 Kernel and I get that cryptic not supported message just w/ a plain vfs.dev.read[hda]. Not sure what to do from here? Does anyone know a good was to measure KB/s read/write on Linux 2.6 in Zabbix? I was thinking of using a vmstat or iostat and sed for what I need, but the first set of numbers from them aren't very reliable, so I need to wait for the second set... etc etc.
Cheers.