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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."
Now we can have Netcraft confirmation of the death with a long DTrace log to back it up.
Trolling is a art,
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save *BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
it kind of proves a point to all those nay sayers that said that Sun had nothing to offer the open source community
what point, SUN still choose not to GPL solaris and java?
I dont think DTrace on FreeBSD is going to sway over and change the mind of those who use and pay and contribute to the GPL. From a strategy point of view it just made BSD's that much more competitive with Solaris and Sun offers. With the GPL you at least get some improvemnts back if your contribution is of value and nobody can close its acess.
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. It means every change is visible to you, and that you are free to incorporate the changes other people have made to your product back into it, or into other projects you are working on. This encourages collaboration, and thus helps the advancement of software engineering.
Here you got some dtrace scripts, direct from my firefox bookmarks.
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
Dtrace is useless, transparent xterms are the new hotness.
I see... "BSD is dying" trolls are immortal... Netcraft confirms it!!!
I'm sure that this stuff will be ported to DeadBSD. See DeadBSD.org for downloads and information.
http://deadbsd.org/
Authorization Required
Browser not authentication-capable or authentication failed.
Ouch- my browser:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.5; FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE) KHTML/3.5.2 (like Gecko)
Sorry, but DTrace is a really great feature regardless of what your political OSS views are. Porting it to BSD only makes it that much cooler.
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:
So try again.There's actually a site called "deadbsd.org" ?!? I posted the gp as a joke. Holyshit!
U send me dtrace to hlp me do ur outsourced job plz.
0 525_h1_b_visa_foreign_it.htm
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_runner_06
U hlp ur old frend 2 take ur job plz.
Thx.
You think this will let my employer figure out where that memory leak is coming from?! You can't trace me! I've got... TraceBuster!
(Ok that was seriously cheesy, but I relive the golden days of my youth by quoting movies with Marky Mark apparently. *sob*)
Is this really a killer feature for most, I say no. For whom is it a killer feature? Level 3 Backline support at best and maybe some devs, maybe. Anyone so busy praising it ever actually used it? What is Solaris really lacking - mega-detailed error reporting? That's why they'll be another round of layoffs, couldn't get DTrace out soon enough?! Please. How about put effort into features IT folks really need and will use. SUN has missed that boat for years now and gotten by on momentum. If this is good for BSD then great, really, but I don't see how people will choose a distro for DTrace, look how well its worked for SUN! -P
You didn't call it "Spinal Tap".
(and he doesn't even say why)
Wikileaks, no DNS
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
Last week I had a major problem trying to get Linux nfs4 clients to mount from Solaris 10 servers. Even though on the Linux client the domain uid mapping superficially worked (I saw the correct user/groups displayed) the NFSv4 Server Kernel Module was still using LINUX uid/gid combinations supplied by the linux client to go to the filesystem driver with to ask for permission.
You, sir, obviously don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
Here's my script, btw
#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -Cs
#define ACCESS4_READ 1
#define ACCESS4_LOOKUP 2
#define ACCESS4_MODIFY 4
#define ACCESS4_EXTEND 8
#define ACCESS4_DELETE 16
#define ACCESS4_EXECUTE 32
fbt:nfssrv:rfs4_op_access:entry {
requested_access = ((struct ACCESS4args *) arg0)->access;
cs = (struct compound_state *) arg3;
cr = (struct cred *) cs->cr;
printf ("uid = %d gid = %d\n", cr->cr_uid, cr->cr_gid);
printf ("ACCESS4_READ = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_READ ? "yes" : "no");
printf ("ACCESS4_LOOKUP = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_LOOKUP ? "yes" : "no");
printf ("ACCESS4_MODIFY = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_MODIFY ? "yes" : "no");
printf ("ACCESS4_EXTEND = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_EXTEND ? "yes" : "no");
printf ("ACCESS4_DELETE = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_DELETE ? "yes" : "no");
printf ("ACCESS4_EXECUTE = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_EXECUTE ? "yes" : "no");
}
... over the din of BSD coders whining for cash. Remember kids, BSD is "free" software, except you had better give the developers cash or something might "accidentally" happen to your critical data.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when
vary for different Lear^n what mistakes
I saw Bryan Cantrill give a demo of DTrace at my university. I was pretty impressed.
I wanted to use it for my application to diagnose performance and race condition problems. However, then I realized I'd have to wrap all the instrumentation so that it would still work portably. Then I thought it seemed like an awful lot of bother just to get some profiling in there, especially if I was going to support an alternate method of collecting the same events so as to make the whole application (which includes profiling support) portable.
"Sorry, we have to run it on Solaris or FreeBSD to debug/optimize" was ultimately what made me stay away from it. I looked into getting OpenSolaris working, and by the time I'd finally finally discovered from Sun's extremely confusing website and the equally confusing OpenSolaris webpages that what I wanted was Solaris Express:Community Release (SX:CR) so that I could get some interesting DTrace fixes and features, and had even burnt the 4 CDs and was all ready to commit to the Solaris way of life, I just got the heebie jeebies.
Hopefully, just hopefully, the FreeBSD port works out well, and there will be a version for Linux sometime soon... there's hope that the advent of the GPLv3 will ease a lot of political slash licensing problems.
DTrace is really incredible for application developers. You can insert lightweight, shippable, debugging and profiling points wherever you want them. I just feel you can't outright commit your project to it yet which is sad. It's the kind of stuff that should be made a POSIX standard, quite frankly.
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 guess the real
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
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.
it's old, tired crap.
... is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_kYaPZ6eds
On an impulse I looked up what other things Plembo has to say on slashdot and I found only today's two posts.
http://slashdot.org/~plembo
Re:Maybe you should wipe your mouth after vomiting Monday May 29, @11:51AM 2 0
Dtrace - is often referred to as "error vomit" Monday May 29, @10:37AM 2 0, Redundant
Of course, either this gentle(wo)man happened across Slashdot where he or she saw DTrace on FreeBSD being discussed
and feeling strongly about DTrace and how it was purportedly perceived as "error vomit" by one or two individuals at Sun Support in Bullington and immediately signed up over that... or a really envious Troll who just dropped by to upset some
(Free|Net|Open|Dying)BSD people either for fun or profit. We'll never know what's the score here but I also doubt we'll hear much more from Plembo.
A couple of years ago I busted a wannabe Monsanto shill who just had three posts to his name. Professional shills take time on a discussion board to build reputable accounts developing rapport with the group and then in time become opinion leaders. On second thought if you work for one of Sun's PR companies and just conned me into attacking and beating the shit out of would-be Solaris 10 deriders, man you did a great job here, more power to you.
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
http://sourceware.org/frysk/
... they use the public domain. public domain is the stem cell
of licensing, whereby you can take such code and graft any damnfool
license onto it if you have the inexplicable urge to think smaller.
oh, and real men don't use 'dtrace', they use 'printf()' --
if it's good enough for ritchie & thompson, it's good enough for me!
Green Hills Software already has a product which can trace anything. I think it does it by recompiling (or relinking?) the software with its proprietary compiler. But once you do that you can trace anything, not just system code. Seems like a cool product if you have the dough. Here's more info, with screenshots: http://www.ghs.com/products/timemachine.html
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
So what are the plans on porting dtrace to OpenBSD?
I've read about dtrace and wanted to try it for awhile, posts to BSDForums haven't helped me either. I don't have it in my ports tree, and it's not listed on Freshports: http://www.freshports.org/search.php?query=dtrace& search=go&num=10&stype=name&method=match&deleted=e xcludedeleted&start=1&casesensitivity=caseinsensit ive
Anyone know how to get ahold of a copy? I've created ports before so I'm not afraid to try some 'testing' version.
Thanks
fak3r.com
No shit, I am officially moderated to troll now... :(
Next time YOU, MODERATOR read PARENT post and THINK!!!
slashdot is sick place...I'm leaving...