BTRACE(8)

💅 BTRACE — the btrace(8) manual, but make it make sense

okay bestie, welcome to btrace(8) 💖 this is the block-device tracing era and you're gonna love it.

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✨ NAME ✨

btrace — live tracing for block devices, bestie. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 🔥

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

btrace [-s] [-t] [-w N] [-n N] [-b N] [-r <dbg mnt>] [-a <trace>...]
<dev>...

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so like. the btrace script is your quick-and-easy lil shortcut for doing live tracing of block devices — no cap, it's genuinely that simple. 🫶

it calls blktrace on the devices you hand it, then pipes that output straight through blkparse for formatting. that's the whole pipeline, iconic behaviour honestly.

if you wanna go deeper on how blktrace actually works under the hood, go read blktrace (8). it's giving ✨extended lore✨.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -s — shows the data sorted by program (peep blkparse (1) for the details, iykyk).
• -t — shows time deltas per IO (again, blkparse (1) has the tea ☕).
• -w N — sets the run time to however many seconds you put in N (see blktrace (8)).
• -n N — tells it how many buffers to use (see blktrace (8)).
• -b N — sets the buffer size for event extraction, scaled by 1024 (see blktrace (8)).
• -r <dbg mnt> — specifies the debugfs mountpoint. that's the one, that's the path 🎀
• -a <trace>... — adds a mask to the current filter (see blktrace (8)).
• <dev> — specifies the device you wanna trace. literally just point it at the device, slay.

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🎀 EXAMPLE 🎀

the simplest possible main-character move — just run:

% btrace /dev/sda

and boom, you get a trace of the device /dev/sda. no notes. ✨

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

blkparse was written by Jens Axboe, Alan D. Brunelle and Nathan Scott. legends, fr fr.

this man page was created from the blktrace documentation by Bas Zoetekouw. 💜

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? don't suffer in silence bestie, report it to <linux-btrace@vger.kernel.org> 📧

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⚖️ COPYRIGHT ⚖️

Copyright © 2006 Jens Axboe, Alan D. Brunelle and Nathan Scott.

this is free software. you may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (yes, all caps, they meant it 💀)

this manual page was created for Debian by Bas Zoetekouw. it was derived from the documentation provided by the authors and it may be used, distributed and modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.

on Debian systems, the text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2. 🗂️

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• blktrace (8)
• blkparse (1)
• verify_blkparse (1)
• blkrawverify (1)
• btt (1)

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go trace something, bestie. your block devices have been waiting for their moment. 🫶💖

and that's the whole page!! this one shipped as blktrace git-20070306202522, dated March 6, 2007 — yes, 2007, she's vintage and she's still serving. periodt. 👑✨