
Linux Performance - pablode
http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html
======
cimi_
I recommend Brendan's book on Systems Performance[1], describes a structured
approach to solving performance problems and is a good reference for various
types of resource performance profiles.

[1]
[http://www.brendangregg.com/sysperfbook.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/sysperfbook.html)

~~~
thesmallestcat
Has anybody else found this book a little too high-level? I've had a hard time
getting useful, practical advice out of it but haven't read it cover-to-cover
yet. For instance there's a bit about the impacts of using a GC'd language,
but there's nothing new, just common knowledge. Does anybody know of a lower-
level/more advanced resource like this book?

~~~
CaptSpify
IMHO: I use it more as a reference book. "Oh, I'm having I/O problems, let me
look up the sections on Filesystems and Disks"

It is _very_ dry, and hard to read from cover to cover, but it is filled with
a mountain of info. I unfortunately don't know of a more introductory book to
recommend, but would also be curious

~~~
effie
The parent asked for more advanced book, not for more introductory book.

~~~
CaptSpify
You are correct. <insert joke about me needing more coffee here>

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RodrigoT
A couple months ago I was looking for some courses that could cover the new
tools available on linux to measure performance: in kernel and user space. My
main frustration is that there was no sign of any structured course that
instruct on all these tools, and as importantly, when to and not to use each
of them. Before you tell me again: no, youtube videos and blog posts are not
good enough: I need to be able to sing up multiple members of different teams
and be sure we all receive a homogeneous knowledge. Can Anyone share any
pointers about where I could find this kind of training?

~~~
abusque
I used to work at a consulting firm called EfficiOS[0], specialized in OS and
application efficiency and performance. They maintain the LTTng[1] kernel and
userspace tracers and related tools, and offer training. I'm not sure whether
that responds to your specific needs, but if you get in touch they'll
certainly be able to guide you.

[0] [http://www.efficios.com/](http://www.efficios.com/) [1]
[http://lttng.org/](http://lttng.org/)

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Sarkie
[https://web.archive.org/web/20161206124221/http://www.brenda...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161206124221/http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html)

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smcl
That "Linux Performance Observability Tools" diagram detailing the utils to
inspect every part of the stack is excellent!

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whatupmd
This site is a great resource and I hope Brendan keeps posting amazing
content.

~~~
digi_owl
It is interesting to see a former Solaris developer embrace Linux like this,
when others seems to consider it an abomination.

~~~
boomboomsubban
It's a tremendous boon to Linux that it happened, it would have been very easy
for him to transition into Illumos while with Joyent or FreeBSD at Netflix.
Both already ran DTrace. He stuck with Linux and spent time making their
performance tools competitive.

~~~
gghh
I love Brendan's writeups and scripts, and use them everyday multiple times a
day, but he didn't "make Linux performance tools competitive".

He's spreading and making available knowledge about perf, ftrace, eBPF that
would otherwise remain relegated in Linux kernel development circles. He's
also contributing to bcc (a tool in the eBPF ecosystem), but his main merit in
my opinion is marketing, with his books and blog (I'm using the term in
positive sense).

~~~
boomboomsubban
The lack of DTrace like tools has long been a criticism of Linux. The entire
BPF team deserves a lot of credit for their work, but his decision to
highlight this problem and help solve it rather than move to FreeBSD likely
got it into 4.9 rather than some kernel in the future.

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arca_vorago
This is awesome, I haven't seen all the perf tools so clearly laid out in
usecase ever.

~~~
SEJeff
You think this is awesome search YouTube for his talks and prepare to be blown
away. Incredible engineer and funny guy.

~~~
nazri1
One thing that I learned from him and have never forgotten is that you can
reduce a harddisk (the spindle kind) performance just by screaming at it
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)

~~~
pablode
This is awesome! Reminds me of how "IBM Tech Uses Hard Drives to Predict
Earthquakes" [1]. And then it's just one guy screaming at the HDDs.

[1]
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371337,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371337,00.asp)

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digi_owl
503, seems we torched the place...

~~~
laurent123456
I'm wondering why doesn't HN keeps a cached copy of each page that makes it to
the front page (or maybe automatically post it to archive.is). I don't think
it would be hard to implement and would avoid this quite frequent problem.

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akerro
This post has only 30upvotes right now, I'm surprised that website couldn't
hold it. My WP blog hosted for ~3euro/month was a few times here on top with
600UV, on reddit, according to GA with 3600 people online at the same time...
and it didn't die to my surprise. I would rather say that hosting is... not
performing well.

~~~
teh_klev
Upvotes are probably not a good estimate of traffic from HN hitting a site for
a multitude of reasons, for example:

\- not everyone upvotes

\- there's probably a substantial number of users who are content to read
articles but have never had a login (I did for two years)

\- social media amplification.

~~~
akerro
I know, that's why I mentioned reddit too.

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shakencrew
Previous discussion on Hacker News:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205057)

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billsmithaustin
His site is a great information source. I used some of his work to diagnose a
JVM performance problem (discussed in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505517)).

