tools/syscount_example.txt

Demonstrations of syscount, the Linux/eBPF version.


syscount summarizes syscall counts across the system or a specific process,
with optional latency information. It is very useful for general workload
characterization, for example:

# syscount
Tracing syscalls, printing top 10... Ctrl+C to quit.
[09:39:04]
SYSCALL             COUNT
write               10739
read                10584
wait4                1460
nanosleep            1457
select                795
rt_sigprocmask        689
clock_gettime         653
rt_sigaction          128
futex                  86
ioctl                  83
^C

These are the top 10 entries; you can get more by using the -T switch. Here,
the output indicates that the write and read syscalls were very common, followed
immediately by wait4, nanosleep, and so on. By default, syscount counts across
the entire system, but we can point it to a specific process of interest:

# syscount -p $(pidof dd)
Tracing syscalls, printing top 10... Ctrl+C to quit.
[09:40:21]
SYSCALL             COUNT
read              7878397
write             7878397
^C

Indeed, dd's workload is a bit easier to characterize. Occasionally, the count
of syscalls is not enough, and you'd also want an aggregate latency:

# syscount -L
Tracing syscalls, printing top 10... Ctrl+C to quit.
[09:41:32]
SYSCALL                   COUNT        TIME (us)
select                       16      3415860.022
nanosleep                   291        12038.707
ftruncate                     1          122.939
write                         4           63.389
stat                          1           23.431
fstat                         1            5.088
[unknown: 321]               32            4.965
timerfd_settime               1            4.830
ioctl                         3            4.802
kill                          1            4.342
^C

The select and nanosleep calls are responsible for a lot of time, but remember
these are blocking calls. This output was taken from a mostly idle system. Note
the "unknown" entry -- syscall 321 is the bpf() syscall, which is not in the
table used by this tool (borrowed from strace sources).

Another direction would be to understand which processes are making a lot of
syscalls, thus responsible for a lot of activity. This is what the -P switch
does:

# syscount -P
Tracing syscalls, printing top 10... Ctrl+C to quit.
[09:58:13]
PID    COMM               COUNT
13820  vim                  548
30216  sshd                 149
29633  bash                  72
25188  screen                70
25776  mysqld                30
31285  python                10
529    systemd-udevd          9
1      systemd                8
494    systemd-journal        5
^C

This is again from a mostly idle system over an interval of a few seconds.

Sometimes, you'd only care about failed syscalls -- these are the ones that
might be worth investigating with follow-up tools like opensnoop, execsnoop,
or trace. Use the -x switch for this; the following example also demonstrates
the -i switch, for printing at predefined intervals:

# syscount -x -i 5
Tracing failed syscalls, printing top 10... Ctrl+C to quit.
[09:44:16]
SYSCALL             COUNT
futex                  13
getxattr               10
stat                    8
open                    6
wait4                   3
access                  2
[unknown: 321]          1

[09:44:21]
SYSCALL             COUNT
futex                  12
getxattr               10
[unknown: 321]          2
wait4                   1
access                  1
pause                   1
^C

USAGE:
# syscount -h
usage: syscount.py [-h] [-p PID] [-i INTERVAL] [-T TOP] [-x] [-L] [-m] [-P]
                   [-l]

Summarize syscall counts and latencies.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PID, --pid PID     trace only this pid
  -i INTERVAL, --interval INTERVAL
                        print summary at this interval (seconds)
  -T TOP, --top TOP     print only the top syscalls by count or latency
  -x, --failures        trace only failed syscalls (return < 0)
  -L, --latency         collect syscall latency
  -m, --milliseconds    display latency in milliseconds (default:
                        microseconds)
  -P, --process         count by process and not by syscall
  -l, --list            print list of recognized syscalls and exit