Ktrace

ktrace
Written inC[1]
Operating systemBSD Unix and Mac OS X
Available inEnglish
TypeTracing

ktrace is a utility included with certain versions of BSD Unix and Mac OS X that traces kernel interaction with a program and dumps it to disk for the purposes of debugging and analysis. Traced kernel operations include system calls, name translations, signal processing, and I/O.[2]

Trace files generated by ktrace (named ktrace.out by default) can be viewed in human-readable form by using the kdump utility.[3]

Since Mac OS X Leopard, ktrace has been replaced by DTrace.[4] The identically-named ktrace program in recent macOS versions does not have the same functions as this utility.

  1. ^ "C source of ktrace utility in FreeBSD". cgit.freebsd.org. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
  2. ^ "ktrace(1) manpage". freebsd.org. 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
  3. ^ "kdump(1) manpage". freebsd.org. 2014-03-28. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
  4. ^ "What happened to ktrace and kdump". discussions.apple.com. 2008-10-17.