1fatrace(1) General Commands Manual fatrace(1)
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6 fatrace - report system wide file access events
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10 fatrace [ OPTIONS ]
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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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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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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
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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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102 fatrace is developed by Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.
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107Martin Pitt February 07, 2012 fatrace(1)