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Ktrace

Software

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated July 28, 2025

ktrace is a utility included with certain versions of BSD Unix and Mac OS X that traces kernel interaction with a program and dumps it to disk for the purposes of debugging and analysis. Traced kernel operations include system calls, name translations, signal processing, and I/O.

Trace files generated by ktrace (named ktrace.out by default) can be viewed in human-readable form by using the kdump utility.

Since Mac OS X Leopard, ktrace has been replaced by DTrace. The identically-named ktrace program in recent macOS versions does not have the same functions as this utility.

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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ktrace”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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DTrace

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released under the free Common Development and Distribution License in OpenSolaris and its descendant illumos, and has been ported to several other Unix-like systems.

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