opening sar activity files error "Invalid system activity file"

Question

Note: I opened this question on Stackoverflow first and realized that this is the right place for the question. Just stating that it is not a duplicate, already closed the question on SO.

I am new to sar(also new to serverfault) I am getting the following error when trying to open system activity files locally(using Ubuntu 12.04) that were imported from a server.

I placed the files under /home/someuser/logs and run the command sar -f sa08. The error I am getting is Invalid system activity file: sa08 Is there anything that I am not doing right?

Also, is there any other way to open the files without using sar?

Thank you

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 06 '14 at 17:10

As per source code you will got this message when there is a differnce in version of sysstat package.Please make sure both server uses same sysstat package

sa_common.c

void handle_invalid_sa_file(int *fd, struct file_magic *file_magic, char *file,
                            int n)
{
    fprintf(stderr, _("Invalid system activity file: %s\n"), file);

    if ((n == FILE_MAGIC_SIZE) && (file_magic->sysstat_magic == SYSSTAT_MAGIC)) {
            /* This is a sysstat file, but this file has an old format */
            display_sa_file_version(stderr, file_magic);

            fprintf(stderr,
                    _("Current sysstat version can no longer read the format of this file (%#x)\n"),
                    file_magic->format_magic);
    }

    close (*fd);
    exit(3);
}

opening sar activity files error "Invalid system activity file"

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