DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time.
Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released under the free Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) in OpenSolaris and its descendant illumos, and has been ported to several other Unix-like systems.
DTrace can be used to get a global overview of a running system, such as the amount of memory, CPU time, filesystem and network resources used by the active processes. It can also provide much more fine-grained information, such as a log of the arguments with which a specific function is being called, or a list of the processes accessing a specific file.
In 2010, Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems and announced discontinuing OpenSolaris.
As a community effort of some core Solaris engineers to create a truly open source Solaris, illumos operating system was announced via webinar on Thursday, 3 August 2010,[3] as a fork on OpenSolaris OS/Net consolidation, including DTrace technology.
In October 2011, Oracle announced the porting of DTrace to Linux,[4] and in 2019 official DTrace for Fedora is available on GitHub. For several years an unofficial DTrace port to Linux was available, with no changes in licensing terms.[5]
In August 2017, Oracle released DTrace kernel code under the GPLv2+ license, and user space code under GPLv2 and UPL licensing.[6] In September 2018 Microsoft announced that they had ported DTrace from FreeBSD to Windows.[2]
In September 2016 the OpenDTrace effort began on github with both code and comprehensive documentation of the system's internals. The OpenDTrace effort maintains the original CDDL licensing for the code from OpenSolaris with additional code contributions coming under a BSD 2 Clause license. The goal of OpenDTrace is to provide an OS agnostic, portable implementation of DTrace that is acceptable to all consumers, including macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Linux as well as embedded systems.
^Wim Coekaerts (2011-10-09). "Trying out dtrace". blogs.oracle.com. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
^ ab"OS internals: Technical deep-dive into operating system innovations - BRK3365". Microsoft Ignite Channel. 2018-10-08.
^D'Amore, Garrett (3 August 2010). "Illumos - Hope and Light Springs Anew - Presented by Garrett D'Amore" (PDF). illumos.org. Retrieved 3 August 2010.
^"Oracle To Bring Dtrace To Linux". Slashdot. 2011-10-04. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
^[1] "The original DTrace is licensed under Sun's (now Oracle) CDDL license. Original copyrights are left intact. No GPL code is incorporated into the release, to avoid legal conflicts."
^Wielaard, Mark J. (2018-02-14). "dtrace for linux; Oracle does the right thing". Mark J. Wielaard blog. Retrieved 2018-02-14.
DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production...
companies. Gregg was previously known as an expert on using DTrace and the creator of the DTraceToolkit. He is also the star of the Shouting in the Data Center...
and technologists, including DTrace and Cantrill, also received an InfoWorld Innovators Award that year. In 2006, "The DTrace trouble-shooting software from...
truss and DTrace UnixWare provides the truss command FreeBSD provides the truss command, ktrace and DTrace NetBSD provides ktrace and DTrace OpenBSD uses...
making the DTrace code live -- which was the first in the chute), and the Sun Legal guy and I were chatting. We were both wondering if DTrace was going...
implicit strictures, full Y2038 compliance, regex conversion overloading, DTrace support, and Unicode 5.2. On May 14, 2011, Perl 5.14 was released with JSON...
users Ksplice to enable hot kernel patching DTrace – As of October 2011, Oracle has begun porting DTrace from Solaris as a Linux kernel module Oracle...
among them incompatibility and complexity of the license text. In 2014, dtrace developer and Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill called the copyleft GPL a "Corporate...
on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace, ZFS and Time Slider. Solaris supports SPARC and x86-64 workstations and...
Cantrill, of 2005 Technology Review "Top 35 Young Innovators", co-inventor of DTrace. Alfred Chuang, co-founder of BEA Systems Danny Cohen, co-creator of Cohen-Sutherland...
facility (commonly known as DTrace), a tool that aids in the analysis, debugging, and tuning of applications and systems. DTrace was released under the CDDL...
processes against code injection, runtime attachment (like debugging) and DTrace; Protection against unsigned kernel extensions ("kexts"). System Integrity...
Apple integrates DTrace from the OpenSolaris project and adds a graphical interface called Instruments (previously Xray). DTrace provides tools that...
replaced by DTrace. The identically-named ktrace program in recent macOS versions does not have the same functions as this utility. DTrace, Sun Microsystems's...
using zdb (ZFS debug) to find a valid importable point in the pool, using dtrace or similar to identify the issue causing mount failure, or manually bypassing...
port of the KVM Hypervisor for abstracting the software from the hardware, DTrace for troubleshooting and systems monitoring, and the ZFS file system to connect...
version, no longer maintained: 7.x 27 February 2008 28 February 2013 ZFS DTrace GPT Reference implementation of SCTP Added support for ARM architecture...
distributions have headed towards SystemTap as the chosen analysis mechanism. Free and open-source software portal DTrace LTTng Dprobes on SourceForge v t e...
contributes to the illumos project. It features several technologies: Crossbow, DTrace, bhyve, KVM, ZFS, and Zones. Unlike other illumos distributions, SmartOS...
operating-system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems. DTrace, a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for troubleshooting kernel and...
examples of SystemTap use at the War Stories page. SystemTap can attach to DTrace markers when they are compiled into an application using macros from the...
the default for the i386 and AMD64 architectures.[clarification needed] DTrace support was integrated in version 7.1, and NetBSD and FreeBSD 7.2 brought...
iptables with BPF?". cilium.io. April 2018. Retrieved 1 July 2022. "bpftrace (DTrace 2.0) for Linux 2018". brendangregg.com. October 2018. Retrieved 16 August...
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