![Forrest logo](/images/logo.png)
bpftrace:tldr:b4dc3
This command uses the bpftrace
tool with elevated privileges (sudo
) to trace system calls being made by processes running on a Linux operating system.
Here is a breakdown of the command:
-
sudo
: This allows the execution of thebpftrace
command with root/administrator privileges. This is necessary becausebpftrace
relies on the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) feature, which requires elevated privileges to access low-level system resources. -
bpftrace
: This is the command-line tool used for tracing and monitoring various aspects of a running Linux system. It leverages eBPF to dynamically inject tracepoints into the kernel and gather information. -
-e
: This flag specifies the trace program that should be executed bybpftrace
. In this case, the program is enclosed within single quotes ('
) to ensure that the entire program is passed as a single argument to thebpftrace
command. -
${tracepoint:raw_syscalls:sys_enter { @[comm] = count(); }}
: This is the actual trace program written in thebpftrace
language. It uses thetracepoint
to specify that we want to trace raw system call events. More specifically, it traces thesys_enter
event, which occurs right before a system call is about to start executing.Inside the program, we define an associative array or map
@[comm]
that counts the occurrences of each unique process name (comm
). This means that for each system call made by a process, the program will increment the count associated with that process name in the@[comm]
array.
In summary, this bpftrace
command with the given trace program traces the entering of system calls and counts how many times each process makes a system call. The result will be a live display of process names along with the number of system calls made by each process.