| .TH ext4dist 8 "2016-02-12" "USER COMMANDS" |
| .SH NAME |
| ext4dist \- Summarize ext4 operation latency. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc. |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B ext4dist [\-h] [\-T] [\-N] [\-d] [interval] [count] |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| This tool summarizes time (latency) spent in common ext4 file operations: reads, |
| writes, opens, and syncs, and presents it as a power-of-2 histogram. It uses an |
| in-kernel eBPF map to store the histogram for efficiency. |
| |
| Since this works by tracing the ext4_file_operations interface functions, it |
| will need updating to match any changes to these functions. |
| |
| Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool. |
| .SH REQUIREMENTS |
| CONFIG_BPF and bcc. |
| .SH OPTIONS |
| .TP |
| \-h |
| Print usage message. |
| .TP |
| \-T |
| Don't include timestamps on interval output. |
| .TP |
| \-m |
| Output in milliseconds. |
| .TP |
| \-p PID |
| Trace this PID only. |
| .SH EXAMPLES |
| .TP |
| Trace ext4 operation time, and print a summary on Ctrl-C: |
| # |
| .B ext4dist |
| .TP |
| Trace PID 181 only: |
| # |
| .B ext4dist -p 181 |
| .TP |
| Print 1 second summaries, 10 times: |
| # |
| .B ext4dist 1 10 |
| .TP |
| 1 second summaries, printed in milliseconds |
| # |
| .B ext4dist \-m 1 |
| .SH FIELDS |
| .TP |
| msecs |
| Range of milliseconds for this bucket. |
| .TP |
| usecs |
| Range of microseconds for this bucket. |
| .TP |
| count |
| Number of operations in this time range. |
| .TP |
| distribution |
| ASCII representation of the distribution (the count column). |
| .SH OVERHEAD |
| This adds low-overhead instrumentation to these ext4 operations, |
| including reads and writes from the file system cache. Such reads and writes |
| can be very frequent (depending on the workload; eg, 1M/sec), at which |
| point the overhead of this tool may become noticeable. |
| Measure and quantify before use. |
| .SH SOURCE |
| This is from bcc. |
| .IP |
| https://github.com/iovisor/bcc |
| .PP |
| Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing |
| example usage, output, and commentary for this tool. |
| .SH OS |
| Linux |
| .SH STABILITY |
| Unstable - in development. |
| .SH AUTHOR |
| Brendan Gregg |
| .SH SEE ALSO |
| ext4snoop(8) |