Why FLTV?

Fermi Linux TRACE gives you traced data in the program. The data are stored in /proc/trace/buffer. You can see the data as following: 

% cat /proc/trace/buffer
The traced data are a collection of numbers. It is difficult to understand intuitively what is happen in the program. To visualize of traced data makes you to have an easy understanding.

This image indicates a processing model of the traced generation and the processing of FLTV. When you need to investigate a program by TRACE, you have to include the TRACE librariy (trace.h) and to add TRACE fanctions on your program. Then you run the program, you get raw trace files in each /proc/trace/buffer.

FLTV has three functions, Parser, Visualizer, and Statistics_generator which are red objects in the previous image.

Parser
It parses the raw trace files and generates the object trace files. I call raw trace files tr-files and object trace files str-files.

Visualizer
It displays you square waves of the input files, str-files. It also gives you some visualizing operation of the data.

Statistics_generator
It provides you Octave data of each square wave. You can analyze timings of the program by the Octave data.

The fltv.jar has these three functions ownself. They are called separately by following commands: 
% java -jar fltv.jar GOV.fnal.muonc.fltv.bin.BinParser ARGS   (<-- For Parser)
% java -jar fltv.jar GOV.fnal.muonc.fltv.bin.BinFLTV   ARGS   (<-- For Visualizer)
% java -jar fltv.jar GOV.fnal.muonc.fltv.bin.BinOctave ARGS   (<-- For Statistics_generator)
I prepare a script, fltv, in bin directory to avoid waste. You can show the usage of the fltv command as putting the -help option. 
% fltv -help
usage : fltv [options] [<tr-files> or <str-files>]
options are:
   -p : parses of <tr-files>
   -o : creats Octave data file(s)
For example, when you have raw trace files and want to get Octave data files from them without a visualization, 
% fltv -p trace*.tr
% fltv -o TRACE*.str
Another case, if you already have str-files and just want to see the square waves, 
% fltv TRACE*.str
Of caurse, you can run all operations by menus of FLTV's GUI.
[back]
mats@fnal.gov