1fatrace(1)                  General Commands Manual                 fatrace(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       fatrace - report system wide file access events
7
8

SYNOPSIS

10       fatrace [ OPTIONS ]
11
12

DESCRIPTION

14       fatrace reports file access events from all running processes.
15
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.
19
20       Its  main  purpose  is  to find processes which keep waking up the disk
21       unnecessarily and thus prevent some power saving.
22
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.
27
28

OUTPUT FORMAT

30       A typical event looks like
31
32           rsyslogd(875): W /var/log/auth.log
33           compiz(1971): O device 8:2 inode 658203
34
35       The line has the following fields:
36
37
38       · Process name. This is read from /proc/pid/comm, and might be abbrevi‐
39         ated for long process names.
40
41
42       · Process ID
43
44
45       · Event type: Open, Read, Write, or Close. Combinations  are  possible,
46         such as CW for closing a written file.
47
48
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).
54
55       If you specify the --timestamp option, the first field will be the cur‐
56       rent time.
57
58

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.
64
65
66       -o FILE, --output=FILE
67              Write events to given file instead of standard output.
68
69
70       -s SECONDS, --seconds=SECONDS
71              Stop after the given number of seconds.
72
73
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.
79
80
81       -p PID, --ignore-pid=PID
82              Ignore  events  for  this  process ID. Can be specified multiple
83              times.
84
85
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.
89
90              E. g. use --filter=OC to only show open and close events.
91
92
93       -C COMMAND, --command=COMMAND
94              Show only events for this command.
95
96
97       -h , --help
98              Print help and exit.
99
100

AUTHOR

102       fatrace is developed by Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.
103
104
105
106
107Martin Pitt                    February 07, 2012                    fatrace(1)