John,
Thanks, I''ll check it out. Just a glance gave me one idea: the use of
the micro character (Chime currently labels microseconds "us"). The
Shark GUI has a nice look.
The current scope of Chime is stated on the project page: "Chime is a
graphical tool for visualizing DTrace aggregations." I''ve focused
on
making it easy to display data from any DTrace program that uses one or
more aggregations with a common key and that avoids printa(). Another
goal of Chime is drilldown (for example, given system calls aggregated
by execname, the ability to break down selected values by another
variable, such as probefunc). My hope is that people will experiment
with Chime (try the wizard tutorial:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/dtrace-chime/new_displays/wizard/
) to create useful displays that
might later function within the context of a larger system- or
application-observability GUI. I do not yet have a design for such a
GUI, but I''m interested in ideas for one.
It says on the Shark page that "the default configuration is limited to
10 seconds or 1,000,000 trace records." The quote appears under the
screenshot of a capture dialog. I''d rather avoid making each data
capture a manual process. Chime is a live display that updates
automatically on a regular, adjustable interval. (Maybe when I try the
Shark tool, I''ll see that I misunderstood that.) The capture dialog
also
has a "Start Delay" control. I wonder if any uses of that control
might
be better handled using a non-manual technique like the Target Process
option of DTrace.
The individual tables on the Shark page appear do-able in Chime. I
wonder, could anyone help out with a D script to generate the raw data
seen in any of the screenshots? Arranging Chime windows side by side on
my desktop might suggest ways that tables and graphs could be usefully
combined in the same window, as in the Shark GUI.
Chime currently uses JFreeChart for plotting data over time in a line
graph:
http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/
JFreeChart provides other chart types that I haven''t tried yet,
including pie charts like the one on the Shark screenshot. Maybe next is
a plot like the one on Brendan Gregg''s tools page:
http://www.brendangregg.com/dtrace.html#DTraceTazTool
This is a pretty wide open space (Observability and Visualization tools
using DTrace) for anyone who wants to contribute.
Tom
On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 10:13:13AM +0100, John Rice
wrote:> Tom - have you guys checked out the Mac OS X''s Shark tool. Plenty
of
> good system analysis visualization ideas to look at that might spark
> some ideas for Chime.
>
> http://developer.apple.com/tools/performance/optimizingwithsystemtrace.html
>
> JR
>
> Tom Erickson wrote:
> >This marks the first community contribution to the Chime visualization
> >tool for DTrace. A huge thanks to Bill Rushmore for creating a new
main
> >window for Chime. Previously a simple stack of buttons, Chime now uses
> >the Netbeans Matisse layout to present a scrollable list and a
> >description pane. When you create a new display, you can now provide
> >helpful descriptive text.
> >
> >Bill also pointed out how to add support for pluggable look and feel.
> >Chime now uses the default look and feel on your system. On mine,
> >that''s gtk. However, you can change to any installed look and
feel in
> >the Options menu. Chime will automatically remember your preference
and
> >use that look and feel the next time you run it. On my system, the gtk
> >L&F is noticeably slower than the default Java L&F (metal), so
I
> >switched to metal.
> >
> >The Chime window redesign comes at just the right time, now that it is
> >easier than ever to add new DTrace programs to Chime. Announcing the
> >New Display Wizard: Instead of hand-editing XML display descriptions,
> >you can access a wizard from the menu (File | New Display ...) or
> >directly from the command line using the -n option. The displays you
> >create are put in /opt/OSOL0chime/displays/new by default and are
> >accessible from the Load menu (File | Load > | New Displays). Once
you
> >get a new display working, try using the wizard to add drilldown
> >support.
> >
> >Get the latest Chime here:
> >
> >http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/dtrace-chime/install/
> >
> >Remember that for now, Chime still requires Solaris Nevada build 35 or
> >later. Let me know if you create anything interesting!
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Tom
> >_______________________________________________
> >dtrace-discuss mailing list
> >dtrace-discuss at opensolaris.org
> >
>
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