ext4dist(8)

NAME
ext4dist - Summarize ext4 operation latency. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.

SYNOPSIS
ext4dist [-h] [-T] [-m] [-p PID] [interval] [count]

DESCRIPTION
This tool summarizes time (latency) spent in common ext4 file operations: reads, writes, opens, and syncs, and presents it as a power-of-2 histogram. It uses an in-kernel eBPF map to store the histogram for efficiency. Since this works by tracing the ext4_file_operations interface functions, it will need updating to match any changes to these functions. Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

REQUIREMENTS
CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

OPTIONS

-h  Print usage message.

-T  Don't include timestamps on interval output.

-m  Output in milliseconds.

-p PID
    Trace this PID only.

EXAMPLES

Trace ext4 operation time, and print a summary on Ctrl-C:
    # ext4dist

Trace PID 181 only:
    # ext4dist -p 181

Print 1 second summaries, 10 times:
    # ext4dist 1 10

1 second summaries, printed in milliseconds
    # ext4dist -m 1

FIELDS

msecs
    Range of milliseconds for this bucket.

usecs
    Range of microseconds for this bucket.

count
    Number of operations in this time range.

distribution
    ASCII representation of the distribution (the count column).

OVERHEAD
This adds low-overhead instrumentation to these ext4 operations, including reads and writes from the file system cache. Such reads and writes can be very frequent (depending on the workload; eg, 1M/sec), at which point the overhead of this tool may become noticeable. Measure and quantify before use.

SOURCE
This is from bcc.

    https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

OS
Linux

STABILITY
Unstable - in development.

AUTHOR
Brendan Gregg

SEE ALSO
ext4snoop(8)