Demonstrations of ext4dist, the Linux eBPF/bcc version. ext4dist traces ext4 reads, writes, opens, and fsyncs, and summarizes their latency as a power-of-2 histogram. For example: # ./ext4dist Tracing ext4 operation latency... Hit Ctrl-C to end. ^C operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 1210 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 126 |**** | 4 -> 7 : 376 |************ | 8 -> 15 : 86 |** | 16 -> 31 : 9 | | 32 -> 63 : 47 |* | 64 -> 127 : 6 | | 128 -> 255 : 24 | | 256 -> 511 : 137 |**** | 512 -> 1023 : 66 |** | 1024 -> 2047 : 13 | | 2048 -> 4095 : 7 | | 4096 -> 8191 : 13 | | 8192 -> 16383 : 3 | | operation = 'write' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 0 | | 8 -> 15 : 75 |****************************************| 16 -> 31 : 5 |** | operation = 'open' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 1278 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 40 |* | 4 -> 7 : 4 | | 8 -> 15 : 1 | | 16 -> 31 : 1 | | This output shows a bi-modal distribution for read latency, with a faster mode of less than 7 microseconds, and a slower mode of between 256 and 1023 microseconds. The count column shows how many events fell into that latency range. It's likely that the faster mode was a hit from the in-memory file system cache, and the slower mode is a read from a storage device (disk). This "latency" is measured from when the operation was issued from the VFS interface to the file system, to when it completed. This spans everything: block device I/O (disk I/O), file system CPU cycles, file system locks, run queue latency, etc. This is a better measure of the latency suffered by applications reading from the file system than measuring this down at the block device interface. Note that this only traces the common file system operations previously listed: other file system operations (eg, inode operations including getattr()) are not traced. An optional interval and a count can be provided, as well as -m to show the distributions in milliseconds. For example: # ./ext4dist -m 1 5 Tracing ext4 operation latency... Hit Ctrl-C to end. 10:19:00: operation = 'read' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 576 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 5 | | 4 -> 7 : 6 | | 8 -> 15 : 13 | | 16 -> 31 : 17 |* | 32 -> 63 : 5 | | 64 -> 127 : 1 | | operation = 'write' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 20 |****************************************| operation = 'open' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 346 |****************************************| 10:19:01: operation = 'read' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 584 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 10 | | 4 -> 7 : 11 | | 8 -> 15 : 16 |* | 16 -> 31 : 6 | | 32 -> 63 : 4 | | 64 -> 127 : 2 | | 128 -> 255 : 1 | | operation = 'write' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 20 |****************************************| operation = 'open' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 336 |****************************************| 10:19:02: operation = 'read' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 678 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 7 | | 4 -> 7 : 9 | | 8 -> 15 : 25 |* | 16 -> 31 : 10 | | 32 -> 63 : 3 | | operation = 'write' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 19 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 1 |** | operation = 'open' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 390 |****************************************| 10:19:03: operation = 'read' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 567 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 7 | | 4 -> 7 : 9 | | 8 -> 15 : 20 |* | 16 -> 31 : 15 |* | 32 -> 63 : 5 | | 64 -> 127 : 2 | | operation = 'write' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 20 |****************************************| operation = 'open' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 417 |****************************************| 10:19:04: operation = 'read' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 762 |****************************************| 2 -> 3 : 9 | | 4 -> 7 : 9 | | 8 -> 15 : 11 | | 16 -> 31 : 20 |* | 32 -> 63 : 4 | | 64 -> 127 : 1 | | operation = 'write' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 20 |****************************************| operation = 'open' msecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 427 |****************************************| This shows a mixed read/write workload. USAGE message: # ./ext4dist -h usage: ext4dist [-h] [-T] [-m] [-p PID] [interval] [count] Summarize ext4 operation latency positional arguments: interval output interval, in seconds count number of outputs optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -T, --notimestamp don't include timestamp on interval output -m, --milliseconds output in milliseconds -p PID, --pid PID trace this PID only examples: ./ext4dist # show operation latency as a histogram ./ext4dist -p 181 # trace PID 181 only ./ext4dist 1 10 # print 1 second summaries, 10 times ./ext4dist -m 5 # 5s summaries, milliseconds