# The state of DTrace



## Nicola Mingotti (Jan 30, 2019)

Hi guys,

Prompted by a recent thread I start to study `dtrace`, my first impression is : amazing tool !

I found some things perplexing though; I would like to know if any of you know something about it.

1] I don't find the *pid* provider. It should be there, at least according to this old page.
I use these commands to test

```
sudo dtrace -ln 'syscal*:::' | head
sudo dtrace -ln 'pi*:::' | head
```


2] I find the provider for *ruby*, cool to the n-th power, but i don't find the provider for *sh*, was it implemented ?

```
sudo dtrace -ln '*ruby*:::' | head
sudo dtrace -ln '*sh*:::' | head
```


3] The error below pops out quite frequently when I let D-scripts run for more than
a few seconds. It lastly appeared when i was watching the output of  `sudo dwatch -R execve`


```
Assertion failed: (buf->dtbd_timestamp >= first_timestamp),
     file /usr/src/cddl/contrib/opensolaris/lib/libdtrace/common/dt_consume.c, line 3330.
```

I am running mostly FreeBSD-11.2, but I did a few test also on FreeBSD-12.0 (in BBB) and 
it seems I get the same issues in both releases. 

Bye
Nicola


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jan 30, 2019)

umm, I just found this link which is quite a good start for FreeBSD specific matters


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