1fatrace(1)                  General Commands Manual                 fatrace(1)
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NAME

6       fatrace - report system wide file access events
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SYNOPSIS

10       fatrace [ OPTIONS ]
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DESCRIPTION

14       fatrace reports file access events from all running processes.
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16       It  does  not  report  file  access by fatrace itself, to avoid logging
17       events caused by writing the output into a file. It also ignores events
18       on virtual and kernel file systems such as sysfs, proc, and devtmpfs.
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20       Its  main  purpose  is  to find processes which keep waking up the disk
21       unnecessarily and thus prevent some power saving.
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23       By default, events are reported to stdout. This will cause  some  loops
24       if  you  run  this  tool in e. g. gnome-terminal, as this causes a disk
25       access for every output line. To avoid this, redirect the output into a
26       file.
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OUTPUT FORMAT

30       A typical event looks like
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32           rsyslogd(875): W /var/log/auth.log
33           compiz(1971): O device 8:2 inode 658203
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35       The line has the following fields:
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38       · Process name. This is read from /proc/pid/comm, and might be abbrevi‐
39         ated for long process names.
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42       · Process ID
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45       · Event type: Open, Read, Write, or Close. Combinations  are  possible,
46         such as CW for closing a written file.
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49       · Affected  file. In some cases the path and name cannot be determined,
50         e. g.  because it is a temporary file which is  already  deleted.  In
51         that  case,  it  prints  the  devices' major and minor number and the
52         inode number. To examine such a process in more  detail,  you  should
53         consider using strace(1).
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55       If you specify the --timestamp option, the first field will be the cur‐
56       rent time.
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OPTIONS

60       -c, --current-mount
61              Only record events  on  partition/mount  of  current  directory.
62              Without  this  option,  all  (real)  partitions/mount points are
63              being watched.
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66       -o FILE, --output=FILE
67              Write events to given file instead of standard output.
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70       -s SECONDS, --seconds=SECONDS
71              Stop after the given number of seconds.
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74       -t, --timestamp
75              Add timestamp to events. When this option  is  given  once,  the
76              format  will be a human readable hour:minute:second.microsecond;
77              when given twice, the timestamp is printed as  seconds/microsec‐
78              onds since the epoch.
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81       -p PID, --ignore-pid=PID
82              Ignore  events  for  this  process ID. Can be specified multiple
83              times.
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86       -f TYPES, --filter=TYPES
87              Show only the given event types.  TYPES is a list of C, R, O, or
88              W with the above meanings.
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90              E. g. use --filter=OC to only show open and close events.
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93       -C COMMAND, --command=COMMAND
94              Show only events for this command.
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97       -h , --help
98              Print help and exit.
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AUTHOR

102       fatrace is developed by Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.
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107Martin Pitt                    February 07, 2012                    fatrace(1)
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