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Adding and Configuring Instruments

The Instruments application uses instruments to collect data and display that data to the user. Although there is no theoretical limit to the number of instruments you can include in a document, most documents contain fewer than ten for performance reasons. You can even include the same instrument multiple times, with each instrument configured to gather data from a different process on the system.

Instruments comes with a wide range of built-in instruments whose job is to gather specific data from one or more processes. Most of these instruments require little or no configuration to use. You simply add them to your trace document and begin gathering trace data. You can also create custom instruments, however, which provide you with a wide range of options for gathering data.

This chapter focuses on how to add existing instruments to your trace document and configure them for use. For information on how to create custom instruments, see “Creating Custom Instruments with DTrace.”

Contents:

Using the Instrument Library
Adding and Removing Instruments
Configuring an Instrument

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