Nicolas Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 09:45:08AM -0500, James Carlson wrote:
>
>> Chip Bennett writes:
>>
>>> Pfiles should be rewritten to not stop processes. I had to go look at
>>> the code to make sure you were right on this. If lsof can gather open
>>> file info without stopping processes, why can't pfiles do that.
>>>
>> lsof does it because it reads the volatile kernel structures on the
>> running system. Often that works because things aren't changing right
>> at the moment when you look at them. But it's also possible that you
>> get back garbage.
>>
>> pfiles stops the process because it uses the debugging interfaces,
>> just as (say) mdb or gdb.
>>
>
> But not kmdb. mdb -k can do everything that pfiles can do but without
> stopping processes. The only problem with th kmdb approach is that not
> all sockets are (were, now that Volo has integrated?) associated with
> file structs, so finding open sockets for kernel-land services required
> quite a bit more work than merely walking the process table.
>
For the record: 'kmdb' and 'mdb -k' are different beasts. kmdb == mdb
-K == "boot with -k" ==
"console only" == "stop the kernel in its tracks". mdb -k is "have a
gander at the still-running kernel".
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