History - History of the DTraceToolkit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 09-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.42 Added 7 more scripts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.57 Added heaps of new scripts. Now at 57 scripts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17-Jun-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.61 Restyled many commands. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 26-Jul-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.82 Many new scripts added, many updates. This is a major release. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 22-Sep-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.84 Some updates, fixed some bugs (cputimes, cpudists). Added cpuwalk.d. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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" http://www.samag.com/documents/sam0512a/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 03-Dec-2005 Brendan Gregg Version 0.89 Added nfswisard.d, fixed a minor bug with tcp* tools (see dtrace-discuss mailing list). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12-Jan-2006 Brendan Gregg Version 0.92 Added a few scripts including rwbytype.d. Fixed several issues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------