NAME

       fatrace - report system wide file access events

SYNOPSIS

       fatrace [ OPTIONS ]

DESCRIPTION

       fatrace reports file access events from all running processes.

       It  does  not  report file access by fatrace itself, to avoid logging events caused by writing the output
       into a file. It also ignores events on virtual and kernel file systems such as sysfs, proc, and devtmpfs.

       Its main purpose is to find processes which keep waking up the disk unnecessarily and thus  prevent  some
       power saving.

       By  default,  events  are  reported  to  stdout. This will cause some loops if you run this tool in e. g.
       gnome-terminal, as this causes a disk access for every output line. To avoid this,  redirect  the  output
       into a file.

OUTPUT FORMAT

       A typical event looks like

           rsyslogd(875): W /var/log/auth.log
           compiz(1971): O device 8:2 inode 658203

       The line has the following fields:

       • Process name. This is read from /proc/pid/comm, and might be abbreviated for long process names.

       • Process ID

       • Event  type:  Open,  Read, Write, or Close. Combinations are possible, such as CW for closing a written
         file.

       • Affected file. In some cases the path and name cannot be determined, e. g.  because it is  a  temporary
         file  which  is  already  deleted.  In that case, it prints the devices' major and minor number and the
         inode number. To examine such a process in more detail, you should consider using strace(1).

       If you specify the --timestamp option, the first field will be the current time.

OPTIONS

       -c, --current-mount
              Only record events on partition/mount of  current  directory.  Without  this  option,  all  (real)
              partitions/mount points are being watched.

       -o FILE, --output=FILE
              Write events to given file instead of standard output.

       -s SECONDS, --seconds=SECONDS
              Stop after the given number of seconds.

       -t, --timestamp
              Add  timestamp  to  events.  When  this  option is given once, the format will be a human readable
              hour:minute:second.microsecond; when given twice, the timestamp is printed as seconds/microseconds
              since the epoch.

       -p PID, --ignore-pid=PID
              Ignore events for this process ID. Can be specified multiple times.

       -f TYPES, --filter=TYPES
              Show only the given event types.  TYPES is a list of C, R, O, or W with the above meanings.

              E. g. use --filter=OC to only show open and close events.

       -C COMMAND, --command=COMMAND
              Show only events for this command.

       -h , --help
              Print help and exit.

AUTHOR

       fatrace is developed by Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.