DTrace Becomes Usable on FreeBSD

daria42 writes "A project to port Sun Microsystems' Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) tool to FreeBSD appears to have achieved some initial success. DTrace was open sourced last year and is one of the coolest features in Solaris 10."

Comments

DTrace scripts

[Life700MB]

Here you got some dtrace scripts, direct from my firefox bookmarks.


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GPL != Open Source

[nsayer]

The GPL is not the only Open Source license. Dig your head out of the sand and see how may others there are.

The CDDL under which the code in question was released is a slightly modified version of the Mozilla Public License. So if you used Mozilla or firefox or whatever to post that screed, then you've clearly sinned against the church of RMS.

Oh, and the CDDL IS an OSI approved license, so that means DTrace IS (by the definition most programmers who don't wear Birkenstocks agree on) Open Source.

As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own.

CDDL Section 3.1:

Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Source Code form of the Covered Software You distribute or otherwise make available. You must inform recipients of any such Covered Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such Covered Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or through a medium customarily used for software exchange.

So try again.

Re:GPL != Open Source

[cortana]

The CDDL under which the code in question was released is a slightly modified version of the Mozilla Public License. So if you used Mozilla or firefox or whatever to post that screed, then you've clearly sinned against the church of RMS.

Nonsense; Mozilla is tri-licensed under the GPL, LGPL and MPL.

Re:GPL != Open Source

[at_slashdot]

Directly from the Church of RMS (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html ):
------
This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. It requires that all attribution notices be maintained, while the GPL only requires certain types of notices. Also, it terminates in retaliation for certain aggressive uses of patents. So, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.

Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term "intellectual property".
---------
Also (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1754155,00.a sp): "according to Mark Webbink, Red Hat Inc.'s associate general counsel. "Some of the license attributes that Sun trumpets actually have the potential of making the software not fully open," he said. "For example, by permitting a different license for the binaries, it will be possible for the binaries to have all of the attributes of proprietary code."

Re:GPL != Open Source

[eviltypeguy]

CDDL was very carefully written so as to prevent their code to be migrated to GPLed software. Sun is deathly afraid that their software will fork under a GPL license and that they won't be able to keep up with the GPLed coders.

Stop spreading FUD. Anyone involved in the pilot process for OpenSolaris can tell you that those are NOT the reasons why the CDDL was created or used for SUN's code. The GPL was also one of the licenses considered.

Personally, I think the GPL is very selfish. GPL projects can take all the BSD code or code from other compatibly licensed files they want, incorporate and improve it but the GPL prevents BSD developers from getting back most of those improvements unless the project incorprating gives them back under the original license (so it would seem anyway, someone correct me if wrong and explain).

Re:Dtrace - is often referred to as "error vomit"

[asaul]

Dtrace is the exact opposite of error vomit, and I dont recall ever hearing it called that anyway. The entire principle is that you dont need to go inserting metric shitloads of debugging and printf("we got here") statements all through your code, recompile it and then see that the error doesnt occur because all your debugging has now slowed your code enough to prevent the race condition that caused the original error.

True - its a L3 and developer tool for the most part, but there are plenty of scripts out there to show what it can do for an admin. Take a look at http://users.tpg.com.au/adsln4yb/dtrace.html for starters. Stuff like iosnoop, iotop, opensnoop and kill.d can be used quite regularly by admins without the need for putting debugging into active applications.

Not ready for -CURRENT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dtrace is one of the best Unix development tools around, no joke. However the project is nowhere near available for FreeBSD users....

From Bryan Cantrill's blog: "If you run FreeBSD in production, you're going to want John's port as it stands today -- and if you develop for the FreeBSD kernel (drivers or otherwise), you're going to need it."

Now compare this to Birrell's announcement: "There is still a lot of work to do and while that goes on, the code has to remain in the FreeBSD perforce server. It isn't ready to get merged into CVS-current yet."

Great news and nicely done... but, um, come back when it's ready for -CURRENT primetime before telling Zdnet it's ready ;)

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[trifish]

> It means every change is visible to you,

That's not always true. If you modify a GPL-ed web application (or server software) and don't distribute it (only run it for / show output to your visitors) -- the you don't have to publish (open source) the modifications.

Here. Use one of my napkins then.

[gd23ka]

Hi there, first I don't give a flying fsck whether i get l33t points over this or really whether I get modded down.
I hope however that either of our posts get modded up so that people actually take notice of this thread.

That out of the way I don't really care whether droves of Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD etc.etc. users rush and adopt
(Open)Solaris. I would definitely switch to Solaris also at home instead of Linux if it supported all of my hardware
but I guess the home-user is besides the point I suppose you trying to make. Suffice it to say I can see no rush to
AIX on the pseries or to HP-UX either but that has more to do with market saturation than anything else.
The more interesting statistic to look into is how many Solaris 2.5-9 users have upgraded to Solaris 10. We admittedly
didn't get all excited about DTrace alone, actually it was Solaris Zones that pulled us in.
Oh I forgot. Microsoft Windows. Either risking to come off arrogant or preaching to the choir here, I suppose people
using that can't be expected to migrate to Solaris either, mainly because of their investment in "Microsoft Technologies" but also from my personal experience due to an (utter) lack of broad technical background on behalf of their staff.
These people for the most part don't trace first and see if they can tackle the problem. They consult "Knowledgebases" or call Microsoft.

So the question is, what rush are you expecting that nobody else is (well apart from the marketing/sales depts trying
to justify their upkeep) ??

2. Is it definitely going to work wonders for BSD. It made my life on Solaris a hell of a lot easier. It'll make
people's lives on (Free)BSD a hell of a lot easier. Soon I'm sure it will do that on Linux and after that on AIX,
HP-UX oh and maybe in a few years hence even on more esoteric systems like Stratus VOS etc.

As an administrator it does wonders for me over and over, because now I can trace SCSI cmds/responses from devices,
trace NFS problems like the one I just bragged about and the like. I get so much faster and easier clued in where
the problem is by looking at what's going on under the hood so yes it is making me vastly more productive as an admin.

3. DTrace is also useful for "regular IT folks" and I guess that's where our real mentality problem kicks in. Firstly,
even you who is definitely not an engineer can use DTRACE scripts other people develop. It's easy, at times all you
need to do is dtrace -s script.d and there you are. But going back to our mentality problem. You're right. I think
DTRACE is not really made for "regular IT folks" that are not fluent in C or don't have a working knowledge of processes/threads/user virtual address space vs. kernel address space etc. etc. I guess "regular IT folks" like that wont get much mileage out of DTRACE but still like I said they can use already developed scripts with maybe someone over the phone helping them. And that brings us to some Level 3 support guys @ SUN in Bulington... their main problem with DTRACE is not that it's of no help or no value. In fact our competition at one site opened a call with Sun on an issue we were already working on and then sent us a DTRACE script Sun support wanted to run. We compared it to our own script we had started on the problem and Sun support was looking exactly at the same cause of the problem we were :-). I guess the real
issue some of the Level 3 Support guys @ SUN in Bulington have is that DTRACE gives third parties like us a hell of a lot more clout in diagnosing problems which results in a lot less calls to them and that's making them vomit.
To tell you the truth I mulled this aspect of DTRACE over too, that it would give the customer and competitors more
insight and transparency into the system, but like you said yourself DTRACE is nothing for "regular IT folks" so
on the bottomline it's a definite plus for us.

systemtap works for me

[j0el]

http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
http://sourceware.org/frysk/

Re:I think the GPL weenies are jealous

[Winter Lightning]

The whole point of DTrace is that it allows you to gather information
that you couldn't obtain before. See some examples here:
  http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc/20040805
here:
  http://users.tpg.com.au/adsln4yb/dtrace.html#OneLi ners
and here:
  http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/dt racehowto.jsp

Declaration of interest: I work for Sun, use DTrace, demonstrate it and
see the expressions of stunned delight on the faces of people
when they suddenly recognise its power.