DTrace at 20

Oxide and Friends · 12 Sept 2023 · 2h 04m · Episode 26

What this episode covers

Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, co-creators of DTrace, along with Josh Clulow, reflect on the 20-year history of the dynamic tracing tool, from its conception at Sun Microsystems to its modern use at Oxide Computer Company. They discuss the technical challenges of integrating DTrace into Solaris, including the Cheetah+ TLB issues and the 'world's worst router' misconfiguration, and highlight key innovations like USDT, uStack helpers, and postmortem tracing. The conversation also covers the tool's evolution across platforms, its open-source release, and its continued relevance in debugging complex systems, including recent applications in Rust and Oxide's infrastructure.

Mentioned

Companies
Sun Microsystems, Oxide Computer Company, Mozilla
Products
Firebird
Chips
Cheetah+
Tools
DTrace, USDT, uStack
Also
Solaris, Rust, USENIX

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