Sysdig

Dev tools

system tracing

SHOW HN2014

171points
48comments
#129of 2,272 in 2014
Top 6%of 2014 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

7 positive, 7 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 6 critical, out of 22 comments about the project. Thread score +0.04.

Execution: 3 for, 3 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 1 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Easy to use with low overhead and useful one-liners

    From 3 comments
    • Impressive. Easy to get going, low overhead, powerful one-liners. I like the filter syntax - would be nice for perf_events to pick this up. Although, if it did, I hope that the…
      brendangregg on HN
    • I had the privilege of early access to sysdig thanks to the developers. It's not as powerful as SystemTap or DTrace but it is very useful and easy to use. Think of it as…
      otterley on HN
    • Looks very useful. Some things you can do with it: Dump system activity to file, so that sysdig can be used to process it later. * sysdig -w trace.scap Print process name and…
      shubb on HN
  • Packaging and DKMS kernel module handling praised

    From 2 comments
    • I had the privilege of early access to sysdig thanks to the developers. It's not as powerful as SystemTap or DTrace but it is very useful and easy to use. Think of it as…
      otterley on HN
    • Given that it involves a kernel module, I was kind of skeptical- but Greg KH seems to have looked it over and fixed it up, which I'd call a compelling seal of approval:…
      krakensden on HN

Objections

  • Performance overhead measured as high versus DTrace in a dd microbenchmark

    From 2 comments
    • Impressive. Easy to get going, low overhead, powerful one-liners. I like the filter syntax - would be nice for perf_events to pick this up. Although, if it did, I hope that the…
      brendangregg on HN
    • A 1 gigabyte no-IO dd is an unusual microbenchmark: it stresses only syscall rates while wasting time with memcpy. (A loop on getpid() or equivalent would have worked just as…
      fche on HN
  • Requires a kernel module

    From 1 comment
    • "The definitive tool" they name it, yet its not as powerful as dtrace. So, its not definitive. Looks nice otherwise. Too bad it needs a kernel module.
      zobzu on HN
  • Install via pipe to sudo bash over http

    From 2 comments
    • Ah, the good ol' pipe through sudo bash installation instructions. I wish there was a more structured platform independent way of distributing stuff before the stuff is packaged…
      yxhuvud on HN
    • pipe sudo bash is one thing, delivery of said bash script over http:// is quite another. An https link should be the default IMHO. edit: the tool looks really useful though.
      yourad_io on HN
  • Less powerful than DTrace or SystemTap

    From 2 comments
    • "The definitive tool" they name it, yet its not as powerful as dtrace. So, its not definitive. Looks nice otherwise. Too bad it needs a kernel module.
      zobzu on HN
    • I had the privilege of early access to sysdig thanks to the developers. It's not as powerful as SystemTap or DTrace but it is very useful and easy to use. Think of it as…
      otterley on HN

Requests

  • Better documentation and README explaining what it does

    From 2 comments
    • I like that you link to the github, where the README is a link to your more-slick website, which has nothing but a couple of examples and an install page, all of which is really…
      peterwwillis on HN
    • See, that is a really good description that would be useful in a README. Right away I know what it is, what it does and whether I should use it.
      peterwwillis on HN
  • Upstream kernel inclusion of the driver

    From 1 comment
    • Any chance you are working on getting this upstream? I noticed Greg KH as one of the contributors
      SEJeff on HN
  • Overview of Linux instrumentation tools

    From 1 comment
    • I feel like some introductory article about the different instrumentation facilities available for Linux systems would be welcome. Just checking wikipedia and google, I found the…
      zokier on HN

Questions

  • How does its design differ from SystemTap and ktap

    From 1 comment
    • I would like to know what's going more low level, Ktap gives a good break down how they differ from SystemTap, dynamically typed, byte-code design... etc…
      joshbaptiste on HN
  • Why a kernel module was needed versus perf_event_open ring buffer

    From 1 comment
    • A 1 gigabyte no-IO dd is an unusual microbenchmark: it stresses only syscall rates while wasting time with memcpy. (A loop on getpid() or equivalent would have worked just as…
      fche on HN
  • Build errors on Arch Linux and permission errors reading /proc

    From 2 comments
    • I am getting error during compiling on Arch linux: https://github.com/draios/sysdig/issues/39 Has anyone encounter with this error before? Any help would be appreciated.
      mesuutt on HN
    • After installing sysdig, when I trying to run it I get the following error: # sysdig fd.type=ipv4 error creating the process list Has anyone seen this one before? Any help would…
      neuronsourcing on HN

Alternatives named

  • DTrace

    From 2 comments
    • Impressive. Easy to get going, low overhead, powerful one-liners. I like the filter syntax - would be nice for perf_events to pick this up. Although, if it did, I hope that the…
      brendangregg on HN
    • "The definitive tool" they name it, yet its not as powerful as dtrace. So, its not definitive. Looks nice otherwise. Too bad it needs a kernel module.
      zobzu on HN
  • SystemTap

    From 2 comments
    • A 1 gigabyte no-IO dd is an unusual microbenchmark: it stresses only syscall rates while wasting time with memcpy. (A loop on getpid() or equivalent would have worked just as…
      fche on HN
    • I had the privilege of early access to sysdig thanks to the developers. It's not as powerful as SystemTap or DTrace but it is very useful and easy to use. Think of it as…
      otterley on HN
  • strace

    From 2 comments
    • Impressive. Easy to get going, low overhead, powerful one-liners. I like the filter syntax - would be nice for perf_events to pick this up. Although, if it did, I hope that the…
      brendangregg on HN
    • I had the privilege of early access to sysdig thanks to the developers. It's not as powerful as SystemTap or DTrace but it is very useful and easy to use. Think of it as…
      otterley on HN
  • ktap

    From 1 comment
    • I would like to know what's going more low level, Ktap gives a good break down how they differ from SystemTap, dynamically typed, byte-code design... etc…
      joshbaptiste on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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