mdflush(8)

NAME
mdflush - Trace md flush events. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.

SYNOPSIS
mdflush

DESCRIPTION
This tool traces flush events by md, the Linux multiple device driver (software RAID). The timestamp and md device for the flush are printed. Knowing when these flushes happen can be useful for correlation with unexplained spikes in disk latency.

This works by tracing the kernel md_flush_request() function using dynamic tracing, and will need updating to match any changes to this function.

Note that the flushes themselves are likely to originate from higher in the I/O stack, such as from the file systems.

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

REQUIREMENTS
CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

EXAMPLES

Trace md flush events:
    # mdflush

FIELDS

TIME
    Time of the flush event (HH:MM:SS).

PID The process ID that was on-CPU when the event was issued. This may identify the cause of the flush (eg, the "sync" command), but will often identify a kernel worker thread that was managing I/O.

COMM
    The command name for the PID.

DEVICE
    The md device name.

OVERHEAD
Expected to be negligible.

SOURCE
This is from bcc.

    https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

OS
Linux

STABILITY
Unstable - in development.

AUTHOR
Brendan Gregg

SEE ALSO
biosnoop(8)