linuxstatisticskernelmonitoringsystem-calls

How to monitor number of syscalls executed by kernel?


I need to monitor amount of system calls executed by Linux. I'm aware that vmstat has ability to show this for BSD and AIX systems, but for Linux it can't (according to man page).

Is there any counter in /proc? Or is there any other way to monitor it?


Solution

  • I wrote a simple SystemTap script(based on syscalls_by_pid.stp). It produces output like this:

    ProcessName          #SysCalls
    
    munin-graph          38609 
    munin-cron           8160  
    fping                4502  
    check_http_demo      2584  
    check_nrpe           2045  
    sh                   1836  
    nagios               886   
    sendmail             747   
    smokeping            649   
    check_http           571   
    check_nt             376   
    pcscd                216   
    ping                 108   
    check_ping           100   
    crond                87    
    stapio               69    
    init                 56    
    syslog-ng            27    
    sshd                 17    
    ntpd                 9     
    hp-asrd              8     
    hald-addon-stor      7     
    automount            6     
    httpd                4     
    stap                 3     
    flow-capture         2     
    gam_server           2     
    
    Total                61686
    

    The script itself:

    #! /usr/bin/env stap
    
    #
    # Print the system call count by process name in descending order.
    #
    
    global syscalls
    
    probe begin {
      print ("Collecting data... Type Ctrl-C to exit and display results\n")
    }
    
    probe syscall.* {
      syscalls[execname()]++
    }
    
    probe end {
      printf ("%-20s %-s\n\n", "ProcessName", "#SysCalls")
      summary = 0
      foreach (procname in syscalls-) {
        printf("%-20s %-10d\n", procname, syscalls[procname])
        summary = summary + syscalls[procname]
      }
      printf ("\n%-20s %-d\n", "Total", summary)
    }