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, Close. Events on directories are + (create), Delete, < (moved from), or
         > (moved to).  Combinations are possible, such as CW for closing a written file, or <> for  renaming  a
         file within the same directory.

         Directory events can only be detected on Linux 5.1 or higher.

       • 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, W, D, +, or < with the above
              meanings. < and > both mean "move" and will always enable both directions.

              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@piware.de>.

Martin Pitt                                      August 20, 2020                                      fatrace(8)