Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Linux in 2016 Catches up to Solaris... From 2004

posted by martyb on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the those-who-do-not-learn-from-the-past dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Veteran dev says timed sampling's arrival in Berkeley Packet Filter makes Linux 4.9 a match for Solaris' DTrace

In 2004 former Reg hack Ashlee Vance brought us news of DTrace, a handy addition to Solaris 10 that "gives administrators thousands upon thousands of ways to check on a system's performance and then tweak ....production boxes with minimal system impact". Vance was excited about the code because "it can help fix problems from the kernel level on up to the user level."

Vance's story quoted a chap called Brendan Gregg who enthused about [the] tool after using it and finding "... DTrace has given me a graph of a hundred points that leaves nothing to the imagination. It did more than just help my program, it helped me understand memory allocation so that I can become a better programmer."

[...] As Gregg explains on his blog, Linux has had plenty of tracing tools for a long time, but they were miscellaneous kernel capabilities rather than dedicated tools and didn't match DTrace's full list of functions. But over time developers have worked on further tracing tools and Facebook developer Alexei Starovoitov recently offered up some enhancements to the Linux kernel that Gregg feels mean it now matches DTrace.

Gregg reckons Starovoitov's contribution, plus efforts like the bcc project he's worked on will offer Linux users their best ever chance to conduct really detailed tracing of Linux.

[...] Gregg's post has oodles more detail about DTrace's long history, plus links a-plenty to tools you can use to employ the tool.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/01/linux_in_2016_catches_up_to_solaris_from_2004/

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Linux in 2016 Catches up to Solaris... From 2004 | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 23 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @12:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @12:35PM (#422007)

    Dtrace *is* part of Solaris 10 and up, not a bolt on. Dtrace is in MacOSX (it has fewer trace points). I think it's in Oracle's Linux as well.

    So any predictions when it will be available on Windows? <gd&r>

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:19PM (#422018)

    As soon as Microsoft invents it.

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:36PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:36PM (#422027) Journal

      And then patents it..... "hey, take us to court.... how much money YOU got?"

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:51PM (#422031)

    >So any predictions when it will be available on Windows?

    No but it's been included in FBSD's default GENERIC kernal since 2012 :-p

    https://wiki.freebsd.org/DTrace/KernelSupport [freebsd.org]

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:57PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:57PM (#422034) Journal
    Someone (at MSR, I think) did port it to Windows a couple of years ago, but I don't think it ever made it into deployment anywhere.
    --
    sudo mod me up