The following is a demonstration of the lockbyproc.d script, # lockbyproc.d dtrace: description 'lockstat:::adaptive-block ' matched 1 probe ^C pageout 49438 mysql-test-run 96414 oracle 149086 sched 220601 The above output shows that threads belonging to sched, the kernel, spent a total of 220 microseconds waiting for an adaptive mutex lock. This example sampled for a longer interval, # lockbyproc.d dtrace: description 'lockstat:::adaptive-block ' matched 1 probe ^C init 136228 java 371896 oracle 783402 sched 2315779 mysqltest 9428277 mysql-test-run 10093658 mysqld 17412999 fsflush 19676738 Here we can see threads belonging to fsflush have spent a total of 19.7 ms waiting for an adaptive mutex. Note: it's not easy to say that it means a 19.7 ms delay in the completion of the fsflush program, as this value is the sum of the block times across all the threads. So it is possible that many threads were blocked at the same time, eg, it could have been 19 threads blocked during the same 1 ms.