Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpda!hpcupt1!dah From: dah@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com (Dave Holt) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: what is msmod? Message-ID: <67870004@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com> Date: 15 Mar 91 21:36:22 GMT References: Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino Lines: 23 The official story is that, like several other undocumented programs in /etc, it's supported for HP field use only (and customers by special arrangement). Now that the appropriate disclaimers are out of the way, msmod is the control program for the kernel measurement system, which has been part of HP-UX since 1.0 on the s800 and ~6.2 on the s300. Msmod manages the trace points in the kernel, while iscan (also in /etc) snarfs trace data from the kernel. Iscan outputs binary data (for speed) which can be parsed into ascii by /etc/translate. At this point you have a file full of numbers suitable for analysis by awk scripts, etc. Unfortunately the set of instrumentation points in the s300 kernel is not as rich as that of the s800 kernel, but you might have some fun anyway. Poke me if you'd like to try doing more with it (I wrote it about 5 years ago, and have been maintaining it in my spare time). Dave Holt HP-UX Kernel Performance (until the reorg) dah@hpda.cup.hp.com