Chapter 14.  dtrace ( 1M ) Utility

Table of Contents

Description
Options
Operands
Exit Status

Description

The dtrace command provides a generic interface to all of the essential services provided by the DTrace facility, including:

  • Options to list the set of probes and providers currently published by DTrace

  • Options to enable probes directly using any of the probe description specifiers (provider, module, function, name)

  • Options to run the D compiler and compile one or more D program files or programs written directly on the command-line

  • Options to generate anonymous tracing programs (see Chapter 36, Anonymous Tracing)

  • Options to generate program stability reports (see Chapter 39, Stability)

  • Options to modify DTrace tracing and buffering behavior and enable additional D compiler features (see Chapter 16, Options and Tunables)

dtrace can also be used to create D scripts by using it in a #! declaration to create an interpreter file (see Chapter 15, Scripting). Finally, you can use dtrace to attempt to compile D programs and determine their properties without actually enabling any tracing using the e option, described below.