Using trace fsslower

    Screencast of the trace fsslower gadget

    The trace fsslower gadget streams file operations (open, read, write and fsync) that are slower than a threshold.

    On Kubernetes

    In this guide you’ll deploy an example workload that performs some open(), read() write() and sync() calls and will trace which ones are slower than 1 ms.

    Let’s start the gadget before running our workload:

    $ kubectl gadget trace fsslower -f ext4 -m 1 -p mypod
    K8S.NODE         K8S.NAMESPACE    K8S.POD          K8S.CONTAINER    PID     COMM             T BYTES  OFFSET  LAT      FILE
    

    With -f we’re indicating the type of filesystem we want to trace, ext4 in this case. The -m parameter indicates the threshold, in this case operations taking more than 1ms will be printed. -p indicates that we only want to trace events coming from mypod.

    The T column indicates the operation type, O for open, R for read, W for write and F for fsync.

    In another terminal, let’s create a pod that updates the apt-get cache and installs git.

    $ kubectl run -it mypod --image ubuntu -- /bin/sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y git"
    ...
    

    We can see how fsslower shows the operations that are taking longer than 1ms:

    $ kubectl gadget trace fsslower -f ext4 -m 1 -p mypod
    K8S.NODE         K8S.NAMESPACE    K8S.POD          K8S.CONTAINER    PID     COMM             T BYTES  OFFSET  LAT      FILE
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       2.66     perl-modules-5.30.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.49     libperl5.30:amd64.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.45     control
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.01     less.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.05     symbols
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.05     md5sums
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.16     control
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            579778  dpkg             F 0      0       1.09     git.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            580362  dpkg             F 0      0       1.16     tmp.i
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            580363  frontend         F 0      0       1.50     templates.dat-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            582040  dpkg-trigger     F 0      0       1.10     triggers
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            580382  frontend         F 0      0       1.22     templates.dat-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            583411  dpkg             F 0      0       2.25     perl-modules-5.30.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            583411  dpkg             F 0      0       2.05     libperl5.30:amd64.list-new
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            583411  dpkg             F 0      0       1.13     tmp.i
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            583411  dpkg             F 0      0       1.26     updates
    ubuntu-hirsute   default          mypod            mypod            583411  dpkg             F 0      0       1.22     md5sums
    

    That’s all, let’s delete our example pod

    $ kubectl delete pod mypod
    

    With ig

    Let’s start the gadget in a terminal:

    $ sudo ig trace fsslower -f ext4 -m 1 -c test-trace-fsslower
    RUNTIME.CONTAINERNAME          PID              COMM             T      BYTES     OFFSET        LAT FILE
    

    Launch a container that will perform input/output operations:

    $ docker run --name test-trace-fsslower -it --rm debian /bin/sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y git"
    Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye InRelease [116 kB]
    Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security InRelease [48.4 kB]
    ...
    0 added, 0 removed; done.
    Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d...
    done.
    

    The tool will list the I/O operations that were slower than 1ms:

    $ sudo ig trace fsslower -f ext4 -m 1 -c test-trace-fsslower
    RUNTIME.CONTAINERNAME          PID              COMM             T      BYTES     OFFSET        LAT FILE
    test-trace-fsslower            35065            apt-get          R      32771          0       7671 status
    test-trace-fsslower            35303            apt-get          R       5619          0       7434 extended_states
    test-trace-fsslower            35312            dpkg-preconfigu  F 922337203…          0       3586 #29920952
    test-trace-fsslower            35312            dpkg-preconfigu  F 922337203…          0       4239 #29920954
    test-trace-fsslower            35315            dpkg             F 922337203…          0       3774 control
    test-trace-fsslower            35315            dpkg             F 922337203…          0       3049 md5sums
    test-trace-fsslower            35315            dpkg             F 922337203…          0       3064 tmp.ci
    test-trace-fsslower            35315            dpkg             F 922337203…          0       2886 tmp.i
    test-trace-fsslower            35315            dpkg             F 922337203…          0       4173 updates
    ...