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    Dtrace Review

    GoogleTalksArchive

    4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2013–2026

    YouTube

    1:18:03 · 19K views · Aug 22, 2012

    Bryan Cantrill's 2007 Google Tech Talk on DTrace, showing how dynamic tracing improves debugging of both development and live production systems. It includes a vivid war story about tracking down a problem on a Sun Ray server.

    HN regards it as a gem of a technical talk that tackles a fundamental debugging problem and shows a new technology solving it.

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    7 comments from Hacker News

    1. @mwcampbellOct 2016· in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

      A few of Bryan Cantrill's talks have already been mentioned here, but this one about DTrace, from 2007, is a gem: this video I especially like the part in the middle where he tells the story of how a an awful GNOME applet was killing a Sun Ray server, and how he tracked down the culprit with DTrace.

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    2. @dmitApr 2013· in “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”

      I'm partial to Bryan Cantrill's Dtrace talk since it tackles a fundamental problem in software engineering and shows how to solve it using a new technology. The talk is more than 5 years old now, but sadly still as relevant as ever. this video

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    3. @chubotMay 2013· in “Stripping kernel/uboot source to 10% for code reading”

      Do you mean you prefer Linux over Windows? If so, then watch this talk: this video Now you will prefer Solaris/BSD to Linux :)

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    4. @mwcampbellJul 2025· in “Using Sun Ray thin clients in 2025”

      For an extended, colorful telling of the experience outlined in that paper, check out Bryan's earliest recorded talk on DTrace, particularly the section starting at the timestamp in this link: this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    5. @qzncMay 2013· in “KTAP: A New Scripting Dynamic Tracing Tool For Linux”

      I have no personal experience with either, but this dtrace guy does not like SystemTap: this video The whole presentation is a nice and impressive dtrace showcase.

      RecommendsView on HN