Process Tracing Projects

This page is editable! Feel free to add similar projects, with good descriptions

Note: I haven't tried most of these projects; I use the more basic mechanisms at Process Tracing Tips and Tools

Projects

• Traceboot: Precise and lightweight tracing for boot and shell scripts
  • https://lobste.rs/s/fl7ly9/traceboot_precise_lightweight_tracing
  • Bootchart but lighter and more precise. - I remember this bootchart Debian project from many years ago?
  • Relies on ftrace events to monitor everything needed while incurring a very low overhead. It has a microsecond-precision and doesn't affect the workload being measured by more than a few percents.
  • Screenshots with Perfetto (Google Chrome tracing UI)
• Show HN: Tracexec – TUI for tracing execve and pre-exec behavior
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297043
  • It's useful for debugging build systems, understanding what shell scripts actually do, figuring out what programs does a proprietary software run, etc.
  • Comments from abathur on resholve (built with Oils)
• Show HN: Timep – A next-gen profiler and flamegraph-generator for bash code
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010461
  • this relies on fragile bash mechanisms; maybe OSH can do better - with profiling there's a bunch of errors but overall it's ~300x slower https://i.imgur.com/qif7Qp3.png so i'm sceptical on all the efficiency claims

Cool Demo with Linux kernel netlink interface

• Exploring Linux command-line space time - Fabien Sanglard
  • https://github.com/fabiensanglard/st/blob/main/code/src/netlink.cpp

Not Open Source

Nice Visualizations

• I Made A Real-Time Build Visualizer
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44902127
  • https://lobste.rs/s/zo4nto/snooping_on_slow_builds_using_syscalls

Comments on This Page With More Projects

• https://lobste.rs/s/uarqvg/process_tracing_projects
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388380 - no comments yet

Related

• Process Tracing Tips and Tools
• Surveys and Comparisons