DTrace gets guernsey in new FreeBSD

The FreeBSD Project has released a new stable version of its popular Unix operating system, officially incorporating for the first time Sun Microsystems' flagship DTrace performance analysis and debugging tool.

(Credit: The FreeBSD Project)

DTrace, which was introduced for Sun's Solaris operating system in late 2003, allows programmers and systems administrators to trace kernel and application problems on production systems, delivering a more powerful level of tracking than had previously been possible. The tool is slowly making its way to other software platforms after Sun released its source code in early 2005.

DTrace has been making progress on the FreeBSD platform for some time.

In an email announcing the availability of the new release of FreeBSD, version 7.1, the project's developers disclosed the DTrace addition, as well as a number of other bug fixes and features that had been added into the Unix platform.

For example, FreeBSD 7.1 has a new default process scheduling system that improves performance on systems with multiple CPU cores; a new software client for locking NFS (network) shares; boot loader changes that now allow FreeBSD to be booted from USV devices; and an interface for better allocating software threads to certain CPUs.

Basic software packages such as the KDE and Gnome desktop environments have been upgraded, and FreeBSD now comes in DVD media for some hardware platforms. The full details and download links can be found here.

FreeBSD is one of the oldest open source, Unix-like operating systems available; it is commonly used in server systems in hosting and internet service provider environments, as well as for database hosting and many other tasks, although rival Linux has stolen much of its limelight over the past decade.

It is freely available and runs on a number of hardware platforms; not only the x86 architecture, but also Sun's SPARC and DEC Alpha systems.