TRACE-CMD-START(1)

📦
version 3.4 · 13 versions
, in arch rolling

✨ TRACE-CMD-START ✨ (that's the trace-cmd-start page from the libtracefs manual, bestie 💖)

okay so picture this: you're in the libtracefs section 1 of the manual, and this is the page that tells you how to turn the Ftrace Linux kernel tracer ON without recording anything. it's giving "lights on, camera not rolling" and honestly? iconic 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

trace-cmd start [OPTIONS]

yes that's it. that's the whole invocation. trace-cmd start plus whatever [OPTIONS] you feel like, and you're off 🦋

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so trace-cmd(1) start enables all the Ftrace tracing, and it does it the exact same way trace-cmd-record(1) does. same vibes, same tracing setup, no notes.

the difference — and this is the main character detail — is that it does not run threads to create a trace.dat file. nope, none of that. it's just here to flip the tracing on.

and like, when is that useful? when you literally only want to enable Ftrace, and you're only interested in the trace after some event has occurred and the trace has been stopped. that's the moment. then you can read the trace straight from the Ftrace pseudo file system, OR pull it out with trace-cmd-extract(1). both are valid, both slay 🫶

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

k so the options are the same as trace-cmd-record(1), except that this one does not take options specific to recording. that means no -s, no -o, no -N, and no -t. those four? not invited to this party 🙈

  • --fork — this option is only available for trace-cmd start (it's special, it's exclusive, it's that girl 💅). it tells trace-cmd to not wait for the process to finish before returning. with this option, trace-cmd start will return right after it forks the process on the command line. heads up though: this option only has an effect if trace-cmd start also executes a command. no command, no effect. that's the rule 🔥

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

the whole friend group, fr fr — go read these too:

👑 AUTHOR 👑

written by Steven Rostedt, <rostedt@goodmis.org[1]> — absolute legend, we stan 💜

🌈 RESOURCES 🌈

the repo link, copy it exactly bestie:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/trace-cmd/trace-cmd.git/

🎀 COPYING 🎀

Copyright (C) 2010 Red Hat, Inc.

free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). periodt. ⭐

💀 NOTES 💀

  1. rostedt@goodmis.org mailto:rostedt@goodmis.org

like, both of those. the email AND the mailto. we don't skip entries here 🙈

okay and the cute little sign-off at the bottom of the page: this came from libtracefs, dated 03/09/2026, and it's the TRACE-CMD-START(1) page. go forth and start your tracing, bestie — you're gonna ate 💖✨🧚

📦 where this page comes from