.TH dcstat 8 "2016-02-09" "USER COMMANDS" .SH NAME dcstat \- Directory entry cache (dcache) stats. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc. .SH SYNOPSIS .B dcstat [interval [count]] .SH DESCRIPTION The Linux directory entry cache (dcache) improves the performance of file and directory name lookups. This tool provides per-second summary statistics of dcache performance. This uses kernel dynamic tracing of kernel functions, lookup_fast() and d_lookup(), which will need to be modified to match kernel changes. Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool. .SH REQUIREMENTS CONFIG_BPF and bcc. .SH EXAMPLES .TP Print summaries each second: # .B dcstat .TP Print output every five seconds, three times: # .B dcstat 5 3 .SH FIELDS .TP REFS/s Number dcache lookups (references) per second. .TP SLOW/s Number of dcache lookups that failed the lookup_fast() path and executed the lookup_slow() path instead. .TP MISS/s Number of dcache misses (failed both fast and slow lookups). .TP HIT% Percentage of dcache hits over total references. .SH OVERHEAD The overhead depends on the frequency of file and directory name lookups. While the per-event overhead is low, some applications may make over 100k lookups per second, and the low per-event overhead will begin to add up, and could begin to be measurable (over 10% CPU usage). Measure in a test environment. .SH SOURCE This is from bcc. .IP https://github.com/iovisor/bcc .PP Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool. .SH OS Linux .SH STABILITY Unstable - in development. .SH AUTHOR Brendan Gregg .SH SEE ALSO dcsnoop(8)