Migrating from Solaris to Linux
Summary
Brendan Gregg translates familiar Solaris tools and performance models into the Linux world and points out important differences. The post updates an earlier comparison table. DTrace was originally developed for Solaris.
Ideas
- On Linux, prstat has equivalents in top and pidstat.
- Functionally, truss largely corresponds to strace.
- perf, ftrace and BPF share the tasks of Solaris DTrace.
- Linux provides a lot of run-time data via procfs and sysfs.
Insights
- Methods transfer more easily than familiar command names.
- Tool tables speed up migrations but do not replace a new system model.
- Changing platforms changes measurement options and blind spots at the same time.
Facts
- Brendan Gregg worked intensively with Solaris and Linux.
Recommendations
- Reorganise old runbooks by diagnostic goal instead of command name.
- Compare the semantics of measurements before adopting thresholds unchanged.
References
Links to the original source and the Web Archive open in a new tab.