4.2.2. Tracking I/O Time For Each File Read or Write
This section describes how to monitor the amount of time it takes for each process to read from or write to any file. This is useful if you wish to determine what files are slow to load on a given system.
iotime.stp tracks each time a system call opens, closes, reads from, and writes to a file. For each file any system call accesses,
iotime.stp counts the number of microseconds it takes for any reads or writes to finish and tracks the amount of data (in bytes) read from or written to the file.
iotime.stp also uses the local variable
$count to track the amount of data (in bytes) that any system call
attempts to read or write. Note that
$return (as used in
disktop.stp from
Section 4.2.1, “Summarizing Disk Read/Write Traffic”) stores the
actual amount of data read/written.
$count can only be used on probes that track data reads or writes (e.g.
syscall.read and
syscall.write).
Example 4.6. iotime.stp Sample Output
[...]
825946 3364 (NetworkManager) access /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier read: 8190 write: 0
825955 3364 (NetworkManager) iotime /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier time: 9
[...]
117061 2460 (pcscd) access /dev/bus/usb/003/001 read: 43 write: 0
117065 2460 (pcscd) iotime /dev/bus/usb/003/001 time: 7
[...]
3973737 2886 (sendmail) access /proc/loadavg read: 4096 write: 0
3973744 2886 (sendmail) iotime /proc/loadavg time: 11
[...]
A timestamp, in microseconds.
Process ID and process name.
An access or iotime flag.
The file accessed.
If a process was able to read or write any data, a pair of access and iotime lines should appear together. The access line's timestamp refers to the time that a given process started accessing a file; at the end of the line, it will show the amount of data read/written (in bytes). The iotime line will show the amount of time (in microseconds) that the process took in order to perform the read or write.
If an access line is not followed by an iotime line, it simply means that the process did not read or write any data.