Hi Brendan,
I''m an anonymous passer by, and have stumbeled across this list.
I''m
struct with both joy and fear when I read of the DTraceToolkit - while
some may find it useful, I hope people don''t see it as a magic bullet.
It may also steer people away from discovering the full power of DTrace,
they may think DTrace == the toolkit. Have you thought of this?
BG> G''Day anonymous passer by, and Welcome!
APB> I ACK your SYN too.
BG> Yes, they are important topics. Let me copy-n-paste from the Faq
included in the toolkit,
"
1.4. Am I now a performance tuning expert?
The DTraceToolkit does not turn people into performance tuning experts
in the same way that owning a set of golf clubs won''t make you a
professional golfer. Experience and understanding is necessary. The
toolkit certainly helps by fetching the data in an easy way, and also
by providing some documentation. So it is valuable, but not magical.
1.5. Will this solve all my performance problems?
This is similar to the previous point; the DTraceToolkit is valuable
for it''s scripts and documentation, but it''s no magical
product.
Understanding and experience are necessary.
1.6. So the DTraceToolkit *is* DTrace?
The DTraceToolkit is one use of DTrace, but there is far more to DTrace
than just the toolkit. DTrace allows people to write their own
customised scripts to solve a wide number of problems.
Think of the DTraceToolkit as a starting point. Maybe your problem has
a solution in the kit. Maybe changing one of the toolkit programs
slightly is what you want. Finally you may need to write your script
from scratch.
"
APB> Thanks Brendan, that looks like a start.
BG> no worries. And if anyone has an opinion on any of this - please
reply!
BG> ok, I''ll sleep now before these emails get any worse :)
anonymous
[passing by]