Watching activity in the kernel with the bpftrace tool
Programming Snapshot – bpftrace
© Lead Image © Zoya Fedorova, 123RF.com
Who is constantly creating the new processes that are paralyzing the system? Which process opens the most files and how many bytes is it reading or writing? Mike Schilli pokes inside the kernel to answer these questions with bpftrace and its code probes.
If you are tasked with discovering the cause of a performance problem on a Linux system that has slowed down to a crawl, you will typically turn to tools such as iostat, top, or mpstat to see exactly what is throwing a spanner in the works [1]. Not enough RAM? Lame hard disk? CPU overloaded? Or is network throughput the bottleneck?
Although a tool like top shows you the running processes, it cannot detect short-lived instances that start and end again immediately. Periodically querying the process list only makes sense to visualize long-running processes.
Fortunately, the Linux kernel already contains thousands of test probes known as Kprobes and tracepoints. Users can inject code, log events, or create statistics there. One totally hot tool for doing this is bpftrace. With simple one-liners, it injects into the kernel scripts that determine in real time metrics like bytes heading off into the network or onto the hard drive, or lists which processes open or close which files.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Akamai Will Host kernel.org
The organization dedicated to cloud-based solutions has agreed to host kernel.org to deliver long-term stability for the development team.
-
Linux Kernel 6.14 Released
The latest Linux kernel has arrived with extra Rust support and more.
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.