Monitoring activities and system processes

Tracers

Article from Issue 147/2013
Author(s):

Programs rarely reveal what they are doing in the background, but a few clever tools, of interest to both programmers and administrators, monitor this activity and log system functions.

One class of tools captures the events and function calls of compiled programs (and sometimes even of the entire system), producing logs known as traces. Programmers can use these logs to understand which function calls and actions lead to errors, and repeated entries could indicate race conditions or deadlocks. Reverse engineers might find debuggers useful, and kernel developers could gain insights into the typical processes between user space and the operating system kernel. Admins can use these tools to find out what’s happening on a system, with traces helping them take a closer look at suspicious behavior. For example, if you monitor and log all calls to the system function open, a look at the debugger output could reveal which programs regularly produce temporary files of several gigabytes.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • How Does ls Work?

    A simple Linux utility program such as ls might look simple, but many steps happen behind the scenes from the time you type "ls" to the time you see the directory listing. In this article, we look at these behind-the-scene details.

    more »
  • Fedora 13 is Live

    The latest release features improved device access, improved virtualization.

    more »
  • Oracle Linux 6.4 Announced

    Oracle Linux 6.4 offers access to Dtrace and support for the XFS filesystem.

    more »
  • USENIX LISA: Ted T'so Helps with System Crashes and Presents SystemTap

    Linux kernel developer Ted T'so shared his know-how in a number of tutorials at the USENIX LISA conference in San Diego. One theme was getting first help for system crashes, and in the process, he took the opportunity to present SystemTap.

    more »
  • Debugging for Admins

    Whether you’re the sys admin of a home network or of a company-wide network of dozens or even hundreds of machines, some basic principles of debugging will come in handy.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus

Visit Our Shop

Trial Subscription

Digital Subscription

Subscribe

Direct Download

Read full article as PDF:

Price $2.95

Linux Administration

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux New Media Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source