Skip to main content
USENIX
  • Conferences
  • Students
Sign in
  • Home
  • Attend
    • Registration
    • Discounts
    • Venue, Hotel, and Travel
    • Why Attend?
    • Students and Grants
    • Speaker Resources
  • Program
    • Program at a Glance
    • Conference Program
    • Training Program
    • Workshop Program
    • Conference Topics
    • Co-Located Events
      • URES '14 West
      • SESA '14
      • Puppet Camp Seattle
      • LISA Data Storage Day
      • CentOS Dojo Seattle
    • Activities
      • LISA Build
      • LISA Lab
      • Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions
      • Poster Session
      • LISA14 Expo
  • Sponsors and Expo
    • LISA14 Expo
    • Sponsors/Exhibitors List
    • Exhibitor Services
    • Download Prospectus (PDF)
  • About
    • Conference Organizers
    • Past Conferences
    • Services
    • Contact Us
    • Code of Conduct
    • Original Call for Participation
    • Help Promote

connect with us


  •  Twitter
  •  Facebook
  •  LinkedIn
  •  Google+
  •  YouTube

why attend lisa?

"LISA is where I find direction for evolving the my core professional skills."

LISA '13 Attendee

"LISA is the conference that I send my system administrators to so they can bring the latest tools and techniques back to the rest of the team. Much of our current environment can be traced directly back to LISA."

Cory Lueninghoener, Deputy Group Leader of Production High Performance Computing at Los Alamos National Laboratory

"Information from LISA helps us push the envelope on automation and scaling, allowing a team of four to manage over 3000 Firefox build and test systems running 15 different operating systems."

Amy Rich, Manager of Release Engineering Operations at Mozilla

"LISA is where professionals share what's hot in designing, building, and maintaining critical systems."

Tom Limoncelli, author, speaker, and system administrator

"I use LISA to benchmark the SA activities in my company."

LISA '13 Attendee

"LISA is the conference that I send my system administrators to so they can bring the latest tools and techniques back to the rest of the team. Much of our current environment can be traced directly back to LISA."

Cory Lueninghoener, Deputy Group Leader of Production High Performance Computing at Los Alamos National Laboratory

"I keep coming back for the technical content and the personal networking opportunities. I attend for career development."

LISA '13 Attendee

"LISA is the place where industry best practices and cutting-edge research come together to advance system administration."

Nicole Forsgren Velasquez, Utah State University

"LISA is where professionals share what's hot in designing, building, and maintaining critical systems."

Tom Limoncelli, author, speaker, and system administrator

help promote

LISA16 CFP button

Get more
Help Promote graphics!

sponsors

Gold Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
Bronze Sponsor
General Sponsor
General Sponsor
General Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Media Sponsor
Industry Partner
Industry Partner
Industry Partner
Industry Partner
Industry Partner
Industry Partner

usenix conference policies

  • Event Code of Conduct
  • Conference Network Policy
  • Statement on Environmental Responsibility Policy

Site Map

You are here

Home ยป Solving Problems and Identifying Bottlenecks with strace and truss
Tweet

connect with us

http://twitter.com/lisaconference
https://www.facebook.com/usenixassociation
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/USENIX-Association-49559/about
https://plus.google.com/108588319090208187909/posts
http://www.youtube.com/user/USENIXAssociation

Solving Problems and Identifying Bottlenecks with strace and truss

Mini Tutorial
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 2:00pm-3:30pm

Doug Hughes, D. E. Shaw Research, LLC

Doug Hughes, D. E. Shaw Research, LLC

Doug Hughes graduated from Penn State University with a BE in Computer Engineering in 1991. He has worked for GE Aerospace at the network operations center, worked six years at Auburn University College of Engineering managing the infrastructure for the college of engineering, and spent six years at Global Crossing supporting the global IP infrastructure. Currently he works at D. E. Shaw Research, LLC where he leads a multi-national team of seven System Administrators covering all aspects of data, networking, and clustering infrastructure.

Description: 

Strace and truss are powerful tools that are built-in to all modern Linux, BSD and Solaris based systems. These tools can be used as an aid to quickly identify problem areas. This has potential benefits for increasing efficiency and identifying performance problems. Understanding how these tools can be used from basic to advanced usage will give attendees the knowledge they need to improve their own and their business' efficiency.

Who should attend: 

People who should attend this tutorial are those wishing to enhance their diagnostic and troubleshooting skills, learn more about how system calls work, and discover the myriad benefits that come from exploiting programs like strace and truss. This will be a strace focused class, but almost all of the options are equally applicable to truss and differences will be pointed out between the two. People with Linux, BSD, Solaris, or Illumos distribution responsibilities will all benefit.

Take back to work: 
  • What are system calls and how do they work?
  • How does strace intercept system calls?
  • What sorts of things can and can't you learn using strace?
  • Techniques for rapidly identifying bottlenecks or areas for programmatic improvement
  • Identifying why some programs are painfully slow
  • Applying statistical analysis techniques for visualization and understanding
  • Using an iterative approach for problem decomposition
  • How to use strace with multi-process applications like Apache
Topics include: 
  • Introduction to system calls
  • High level system call histograms
  • Gathering information from running processes
  • Various arguments for strace and when to apply them
  • How to narrow in on problem areas
  • Decoding system call arguments and data structures
  • Using statistics to aid with problem diagnostics
  • How to make inferences about areas where strace data is inconclusive
  • Dealing with threaded and multi-process programs
  • Log in or    Register to post comments

Back to Conference Program

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors

General Sponsors

Media Sponsors & Industry Partners

© USENIX

  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us

LISA is a registered trademark of the USENIX Association.