From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267538AbUHTAXZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:23:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267540AbUHTAXZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:23:25 -0400 Received: from mail.enyo.de ([212.9.189.167]:41998 "EHLO mail.enyo.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267538AbUHTAXX (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:23:23 -0400 To: Miles Lane Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: DTrace-like analysis possible with future Linux kernels? References: <200408191822.48297.miles.lane@comcast.net> <87hdqyogp4.fsf@killer.ninja.frodoid.org> From: Florian Weimer Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:23:22 +0200 In-Reply-To: <87hdqyogp4.fsf@killer.ninja.frodoid.org> (Julien Oster's message of "Fri, 20 Aug 2004 01:23:35 +0200") Message-ID: <87k6vu3bet.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org * Julien Oster: > Miles Lane writes: > >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/08/dtrace_user_take/: >> "Sun sees DTrace as a big advantage for Solaris over other versions of Unix >> and Linux." > > That article is way too hypey. Maybe, but DTrace seems to solve one really pressing problem: tracking disk I/O to the processes causing it. Unexplained high I/O utilization is a *very* common problem, and there aren't any tools to diagnose it. Most other system resources can be tracked quite easily: disk space, CPU time, committed address space, even network I/O (with tcpdump and netstat -p). But there's no such thing for disk I/O.