Tracing Python with DTrace
Dtrace users on Linux can now trace execution of Python programs with built-in probes in the language itself. In the blog we describe how to add custom USDT probes to Python programs.
If you're new to DTrace, a variety of training resources are available to help you.
We Debug Live Kernels Using drgn – You Can Too!
Debugging Linux kernel issues is notoriously complex, demanding advanced tools to pinpoint root causes. Drgn is a modern debugger that seamlessly integrates Python scripting, enabling powerful, automated analysis directly on a live kernel. With drgn, we can rapidly investigate and resolve problems without resorting to disruptive vmcore collection or downtime.
In this article, we showcase five real-world customer case studies where drgn enabled us to solve kernel issues significantly faster than traditional methods—demonstrating how this tool transforms kernel debugging and accelerates incident resolution, all without needing downtime for a vmcore!
Emulating Disk Latency with the Linux Device Mapper dm-delay
This blog provides a practical, step-by-step guide to creating a delayed virtual block device using a loop file, benchmarking performance with fio, and comparing results against a baseline. This repeatable approach allows you to easily simulate storage latency, making it ideal for testing timeouts, tuning filesystems and databases, and validating your monitoring setup. By leveraging dm-delay, developers, testers, and SREs gain a powerful tool to assess and strengthen system resilience under controlled storage latency conditions.
Setup QEMU vhost-user-scsi and SPDK on Oracle Linux 8
In this article, we demonstrate how to build and set up the QEMU vhost-user-scsi and SPDK environment on Oracle Linux 8. We utilize a raw image file as the storage. We did not configure the CPU affinity mask to bind any SPDK threads, as this article is intended for study purposes only. Developers may use OCI and Oracle Linux 8 for vhost-user-scsi/SPDK-related development/research projects. |
