Linux: State Tracing, Visualizing Fragmentation

Yumiko Sugita announced the 2.3.1 release ofLKST, the Linux Kernel State Tracer. The project page notes, the "Linux Kernel State Tracer(LKST) records information as trace data about events in the Linux Kernel. It records various events like process context switch, send signal, exception, memory allocation, send packet, and so on." LKST is primarily a debugging tool that allows debugging on a live system, and it can also be used for performance analysis. It was originally announced inearly 2002, withregular releases over the past few years.

At the same time, Yumiko also announced version 1.2.1.ofdav, the Disk Allocation Viewer. The project page describes dav as "a program which collects and visualizes the fragmentation status information of [the ext2 and ext3] Linux filesystems. dav can collect the fragmentation status information regardless of whether [or not the] filesystem is mounted, and can output its text data orvisualize it."