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Microsoft Working on Porting Sysinternals To Linux (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A Microsoft exec has confirmed yesterday that the company's engineers are working on porting the highly popular Sysinternals software package to Linux. Microsoft engineers have already ported the ProcDump utility and are currently working on porting ProcMon as well. More tools to follow.

Microsoft's decision to port this highly popular debugging utility to Linux comes after two months ago, in September, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, revealed that "sometimes slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux." With Linux's growing adoption as the preferred OS for running Azure VMs, it's only natural that Azure engineers are now looking into porting their favorite debugging utilities to Linux, for both themselves but also for the company's customers.

13 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. How pointless is that by fisted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is actually funny and sad. Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default? This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux.

    smh

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    1. Re:How pointless is that by slack_justyb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't the MS people realize that the only reason for using "sysinternals" is that their OS doesn't come with decent instrumentation by default?

      No.

      This toolset doesn't even come close to what's natively available in Unix or Linux

      Correct. However, no one wants to really learn how to use those tools. So that's where the demand for this comes from.

      I guess the question, Should folks learn these tools? Should folks educate themselves? is the underlying question here. I know exactly how I feel but, how I feel doesn't change the mentality one bit.

    2. Re:How pointless is that by caseih · · Score: 4, Informative

      To be fair, procmon is a pretty nifty GUI and can show you a lot of information in one place. More info than top.

      One thing that's always bothered me on windows is the lack of a simple way to determine what DLLs are missing. A missing shared library in linux will be apparent with an error message from the linker when you try to run the executable. Or you can use the ldd command to determine what shared libraries it links to and whether they can be found on the system. On Windows, you just get an error dialog box that says the program won't run, with no information about what is missing. And it's not easy to find out what the missing dlls are either. You have to resort to DLL dependency walkers. In terms of tools Windows is a bizarre mix of complete deficiencies and the fanciest GUI tools.

      Anyway it will be interesting to see what they come up with. The mere fact they want to port these highly OS-specific tools to Linux is very interesting, given MS's history with Linux. And we should be in favor of any tools that ease the transition away from a proprietary OS to something more open.

    3. Re:How pointless is that by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is at least some benefit in having their entire team using a single tool across platforms. Apparently deemed worth the porting effort, anyway.

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    4. Re:How pointless is that by llamalad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I see we're well into the "extend" phase now.

    5. Re:How pointless is that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      port these highly OS-specific tools to Linux

      I'm thrilled to finally have regmon.exe on Linux. That's gonna be a life saver when systemd-registryd is rolled out!

    6. Re:How pointless is that by fisted · · Score: 4, Insightful

      strace, ltrace, hell, dtrace. if you have the source and aren't incompetent, gdb and valgrind.
      are just the first few that come to mind.

      Oh, you're looking for a tool *exactly* like file/regmon that craps out tens of thousands of lines in a piss poor performing text widget, faster than it can actually handle the input, so by default you have to add blacklisting filters (in addition to the dozen blacklisting filters that come preinstalled) to even narrow down the data to what you may be looking for? Yeah, sorry, I don't think that's happening, nor that anybody really needs/wants it. And it only makes sense for the classical Windows problem "something is wrong but nothing tells me even remotely what may be going on so I'll have to look at all processes and the kernel at the same time", anyway.

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  2. The new code... by reanjr · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Linux port operates on the command line, and is simply two line bash scripts and aliases.

  3. Re:I don't know how by ctilsie242 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a difference. Back in the Halloween Documents era, MS wasn't making money from Linux. Now, they make money, hand-over-fist over Linux. That Android phone? MS makes something from each and every one of those. Azure? It doesn't really matter what OS people run on their cloud platform; they get charged for the VM anyway, so might as well make Linux work better.

    MS is in an odd position where their financial interests lie in keeping Linux going, so if they want to port some of their useful utilities, more power to them.

  4. BSOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hi hope they port the BSOD screensaver from the sysinternals kit as well.

  5. Re:Extend? by stooo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Next step is obviously Extinguish.
    But this time it could be MS that gets extinguished...

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  6. This is one step, not the goal. Someone got confus by raymorris · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think there are two possible explanations for this.

    Most likely:
    The boss figured out there is no reason for Microsoft to keep developing their own kernel when they can just slap their UI on top of Linux. The boss said "port the system internals to Linux". A programmer got confused and ported SysInternals", the toolkit for seeing the system internals.

    Also likely:

    The eventual goal is to switch the system internals to Linux.
    In Agile fashion, Microsoft figured they'd start with a bite-sizdd chunk work that feels like it might be kinda going in that direction. It won't actually be used in the end, because it wasn't planned out, it was Scrumed.

  7. Why this is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I understand there is a lot of skepticism about this, but I think this is great for the Linux community. While long-time Linux users will never use these tools, it makes the transition cost for the top-tier Windows users a lot smaller.

    Most of the stereotypical Windows sysadmins have no idea what these tools are. Their standard troubleshooting involves rebooting, rebuilding, trying some magic registry key that once fixed another problem. Those users will stay in their comfort zone.

    The Windows users that understand how an operating system works and truly understand how to use various tools to analyze a problem and troubleshoot it will be able to make the transition. Sure they will use the tools they are familiar with first, but these are the personality types that will adapt. They will not be the proponents to move more Linux into legacy enterprise environments. Many will become valuable contributors to the community.