TRACE-CMD-STREAM(1)

📦
version 3.4 · 13 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 TRACE-CMD-STREAM(1) — the libtracefs girlies' guide 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to trace-cmd-stream, straight out of the libtracefs manual, and honestly? it's giving live-trace realness. let's get into it 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

trace-cmd stream [OPTIONS] [command]

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. [OPTIONS] and an optional [command], and you're off 🦋

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so trace-cmd(1) with the stream subcommand starts tracing exactly like trace-cmd-record(1) does — same energy, same setup — except it does not record to a file. nope! instead it reads the binary buffer as it is happening, converts it to a human readable format, and writes it to stdout. live. in real time. no cap 🎀

lowkey this is basically the same as running trace-cmd-start(1) and then doing a trace-cmd-show(1) with the -p option. like, same result, different path. iykyk.

now, real talk: trace-cmd-stream is not as efficient as reading from the pipe file, because most of the stream work is done in userspace. it's literally doing the heavy lifting itself instead of letting the kernel handle it 😭 key point though — that's exactly why it's useful: if you need to do the work mostly in userspace instead of the kernel, this is your girl. slay 💅

and plot twist — stream also helps to debug trace-cmd-profile(1), which uses the stream code to perform the live data analysis for the profile. so it's not just a pretty face ✨

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • the options here are the same as trace-cmd-record(1), with one exception: it does not take the -o option. that's the whole tea. no -o, periodt 💀
honestly this section is short and i respect that. the rest of the flags live over in trace-cmd-record(1) — go say hi 👑

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

the whole squad, fr fr 🌈

💜 AUTHOR 💜

written by Steven Rostedt, <rostedt@goodmis.org[1]> — icon behavior, we stan 👑

🦋 RESOURCES 🦋

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

go look, bestie, the source is right there 💖

🎀 COPYING 🎀

Copyright (C) 2014 Red Hat, Inc. free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). so yes, free, but read the license, it's not a suggestion ✨

📝 NOTES 📝

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

like, literally the same email, just clickable. that's the note. 🍓

aaaand that's the page!! this one's from libtracefs, dated 03/09/2026, and it's a whole TRACE-CMD-STREAM(1) moment. happy streaming, bestie — may your buffers be binary and your stdout be gorgeous 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶

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