History - History of the DTraceToolkit
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20-Apr-2005 Brendan Gregg Idea
For a while I had thought that a DTrace toolkit would be a nice
idea, but on this day it became clear. I was explaining DTrace to
an SSE from Sun (Canberra, Australia), who had a need for using
DTrace but didn't have the time to sit down and write all the
tools he was after. It simply made sense to have a DTrace toolkit
that people could download or carry around a copy to use. Some
people would write DTrace tools, others would use the toolkit.
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15-May-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.30
I had discussed the idea of a DTrace toolkit with the Sun PAE guys in
Adelaide, Australia. It was making more sense now. It would be much
like the SE Toolkit, not just due to the large number of sample
scripts provided, but also due to the role it would play: few people
wrote SE Toolkit programs, more people used it as a toolkit. While
we would like a majority of Solaris users to write DTrace scripts,
the reality is that many would want to use a prewritten toolkit.
Today I created the toolkit as version 0.30, with 11 main directories,
a dozen scripts, man pages and a structure for documentation.
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16-May-2005 Brendan Gregg OneLiners
I've been using the toolkit for a day now (wow!), and have noticed
a few problems I've been fixing. One of them was the dtrace oneliners.
I have them in two files, Docs/oneliners.txt and the examples in
Docs/Examples/oneliners_examples.txt. The problem is that when I'm
looking for a script, I'm looking in Docs/Commands - a list of the
seperate script files, or I'm doing an ls or find. Ok, so I've now
made each one liner a seperate script. This seems at first pretty
silly since they are oneliners and shouldn't deserve an entire script
each, but I've found having them as seperate scripts makes them far
easier to find and use. The scripts and man page for each script do
point out the fact that it's a one liner.
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17-May-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.33
Version 0.33 with 33 scripts. Maybe I should make the version number
equal the script count. :) I just finished dtruss, dapptrace and
dappprof.
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08-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Name changes.
I've renamed Docs/Commands to Docs/Contents. I found myself typing
"more Docs/Contents" by mistake a lot. ok, maybe it made more sense
to call it Contents after all. I've also made a symlink to it called
Index.
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08-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.35
Version 0.35 with 35 scripts. Also touched up procsystime and some
man pages. Added the CDDL version 1.0.
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09-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.42
Added 7 more scripts.
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14-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.57
Added heaps of new scripts. Now at 57 scripts.
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17-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.61
Restyled many commands.
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28-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.70
Added several commands including dexplorer. Developed a few useful
variants of classic scripts while writing dexplorer, and have added
them to the toolkit (I kept wanting to run them individually but
not have to run an entire dexplorer).
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25-Jul-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.77
Added tcpsnoop.d, tcpsnoop, tcptop. Because of their addition I have
dropped tcpwbytes.d and tcpwlist. These are complex scripts, but they
track TCP in an accurate manner. However! also because they are
complex scripts, I expect they will require maintainence for newer
versions of [Open]Solaris, as various probes may change. They will
become much more stable once a network provider has been added to
DTrace (which may be some time away).
Also added iotop, and updated a bunch of scripts. A lot of work went
into this version, although the version change doesn't reflect that
(I'm still keeping the version number == to number of scripts).
Also added rwsnoop, rwtop, and more.
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26-Jul-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.82
Many new scripts added, many updates. This is a major release.
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17-Sep-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.83
A few scripts have been updated so that they work better.
execsnoop, iosnoop, opensnoop and rwsnoop will be more responsive
(increased switchrate).
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22-Sep-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.84
Some updates, fixed some bugs (cputimes, cpudists). Added cpuwalk.d.
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15-Nov-2005 Brendan Gregg Sys Admin Magazine
Ryan Matteson wrote an article on the DTraceToolkit which has been
printed in Sys Admin Magazine, December 2005. It's quite good,
and made it as the feature article - which means it will be available
online for some time. Thanks Matty, and Sys Admin Magazine!
"Observing I/O Behavior with the DTraceToolkit"
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01-Dec-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.88
Many scripts were updated. Added the Apps category. I had planned
to add some key scripts, but they haven't made it out of testing yet.
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03-Dec-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.89
Added nfswisard.d, fixed a minor bug with tcp* tools (see
dtrace-discuss mailing list).
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12-Jan-2006 Brendan Gregg Version 0.92
Added a few scripts including rwbytype.d. Fixed several issues.
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09-Apr-2006 Brendan Gregg Solaris Internals 2nd Edition
In the past few months I have been contributing to Solaris Internals
2nd Edition. This book (now two volumes) is really amazing. The 2nd
volume does use the DTraceToolkit where appropriate, and covers loads
of useful topics. While writing and reviewing material for Solaris
Internals, I've had numerous new ideas for DTrace scripts. Not only
that, but a few people have managed to send me well styled, carefully
tested, well considered DTrace scripts for inclusion in the toolkit.
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20-Apr-2006 Brendan Gregg TCP bug fixed
Stefan Parvu sent me a bug for the tcp* scripts: on build 31+ they
error'd on the symbol SS_TCP_FAST_ACCEPT. This symbol was
renamed to SS_DIRECT (I checked the code, they are used in the
same way). Ironically, when I first wrote the scripts I had hardcoded
the value 0x00200000, then rewrote it "properly" by importing
the header files and using the symbol name. Had I been lazy and left
it hardcoded, the bug would never have eventuated. Not to worry,
it has returned to being hardcoded, so that it works on all builds
(until something else changes).
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21-Apr-2006 Brendan Gregg Restyled - again!
I've been writing the "DTraceToolkit Style Guide", to document
the style that these scripts obey. It is quite strict, and sets
the bar fairly high. I've been warned that it may cause very few
people to ever contribute scripts, which is fine. At some point
I'll carefully explain the mentality behind this, but in a nutshell:
Users on critical production servers expect the tools to be
accurate, carefully tested, and cause no undocumented harm.
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22-Apr-2006 Brendan Gregg Docs changes
The "Contrib" file was merged into the "Who" file. In hindsight
it is better to keep this data together than to split it up.
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24-Apr-2006 Brendan Gregg Version 0.96
The toolkit now contains 104 scripts, however I'll keep the version
number < 1.00 until the dust has settled on these new scripts.
There is some special significance with version 1.00, it would
imply that every script had been tested for some time - not that
I've just added a few.
There is a new main directory, FS for file system related scripts.
There are some interesting scripts in there, from or based on
Solaris Internals 2nd ed, vol 2.
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30-Sep-2007 Brendan Gregg Version 0.99
It's been a year and a half since the last release, and a lot has
happneed. Firstly, the DTraceToolkit has featured in the Prentice Hall
book,
Solaris Performance and Tools
DTrace and mdb techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris
written by Richard McDougall, Jim Mauro and myself. It is a companion
book to "Solaris Internals 2nd edition" by Richard McDougall and
Jim Mauro. If you are serious about becomming a DTrace guru,
especially on Solaris, then please study both books. (Yes, I realize
that many people are using the DTraceToolkit because they don't have
the time or don't want to become DTrace gurus; well, so long as
you are using DTrace anyway :). The performance book was a great relief
to write - since we were able to put to print much performance wisdom
and knowledge that was begging to be documented.
Then, in late 2006 I joined an advanced products engineering team
at Sun in San Francisco, a team which includes the three members of
team DTrace. It's been a great opportunity to learn from such
engineers, and to contribute more directly to DTrace. So far my work
has included writing a JavaScript provider, integrated inet_ntoa()
style functions into DTrace, and prototying DTrace IP, TCP and UDP
providers.
Working on the network providers is good news for the DTraceToolkit,
as it will indirectly help the tcp* scripts become more stable. Yes,
those scripts have broken a few more times during the last 18 months,
sorry about that, and it will keep happening until we have stable
network providers. This is why I only ever wrote three tcp* scripts,
and not at least a dozen, which I'd really like to do.
I did leave my pile of old SPARC and x86 development servers behind
in Australia, and brought over a couple of laptops. That has made me
more dependant on Stefan for testing the toolkit - especially on SPARC.
So, it's been about 18 months since the last release, which is
mostly due to having less spare time due to moving countries and
learning a new job.
Michelle from Sun docs has been asking for a newer version of the
DTraceToolkit for the OpenSolaris starter kit, which is why I'm
releasing this version now and not waiting a few more weeks as
I complete bug fixes.
So the good and the bad news for this release, starting with the bad,
Bad: tcpsnoop/tcptop still don't work on some Solaris 10 releases.
I've added versions that should work on Solaris Nevada and OpenSolaris
for releases from around late 2007. They are likely to break again.
The real answer, as always, is for stable nework providers to be
integrated into Solaris.
Many of the exciting new language provider scripts in this release
currently require downloading, patching and compling of the language
interpreter to get working. See the Readme file in each directory
for pointers.
Good: many more scripts to cover the new DTrace language providers
that are available (the DTraceToolkit is now 227 scripts). Many
updates to the Notes directory. Bug fixes. Some new categories
other than for scripts: Code - for simple programs to DTrace (and
for the example files), and Snippits - for useful lumps of DTrace
code to copy-n-paste from. The man pages are also making room
for documenting both stability and supported operating systems for
each script - now that DTrace exists for MacOS X Leopard, the
DTraceToolkit will begin supporting multiple operating systems.
This can be thought of as a developer's release of the DTraceToolkit -
to help people start using DTrace with Perl, Python, Ruby, Php, Java,
JavaScript, Shell and Tcl. I've written about 15 scripts for each
language, to cover the basics and to show the way for deeper analysis.
The scripts are also similar from one language to another, having
devoleped a tried-and-tested group of scripts for analyzing real world
issues - it made sense to repeat these scripts for every language
possible. To see what I mean, try reading,
You might notice that the example files are more clearly and carefully
explained. Claire (my wife), wrote close to one hundred of them for
this release while I focused on writing and testing the scripts.
Claire has worked as a SysAdmin and as an IT instructor, and is well
skilled at explaining relavent technical details. And she can spell
much better than I can. :)
The future: I still have many new scripts and some bug fixes in mind,
as well as generally improving the Notes and Examples provided.
Hopefully it won't be too many months before you see another
release. Check here for the lastest installment,
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