Get current disk load

Question

Since I can't use watch on iostat -dx 1 to get the current disk load, I'd like to know if there is an alternative way to do this, e.g., doing calculations with the values contained in /proc/diskstats and/or some other files.

Answer 1

According to kernel.org, the mapping is :

    The /proc/diskstats file displays the I/O statistics
    of block devices. Each line contains the following 14
    fields:
     1 - major number
     2 - minor mumber
     3 - device name
     4 - reads completed successfully
     5 - reads merged
     6 - sectors read
     7 - time spent reading (ms)
     8 - writes completed
     9 - writes merged
    10 - sectors written
    11 - time spent writing (ms)
    12 - I/Os currently in progress
    13 - time spent doing I/Os (ms)
    14 - weighted time spent doing I/Os (ms)
    For more details refer to Documentation/iostats.txt

You can use or read Sys::Statistics::Linux::DiskStats too