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Downloads: traces.tar, analyze.tar.gz, utilities.tar.gz

Using the Traces

You can download the complete trace archive by clicking here: traces.tar (115MB). The .tar contains a trace_archive directory of 34 traces, each a .tar.gz file. Each of these tars will contain 4 files:

  • init.txt: an initial snapshot of file sizes
  • sorted.txt: system calls that are called by the application
  • top.log: log of running the top UNIX utility to determine CPU usage
  • verion.txt: just contains an ID that we used to distinguish different runs of the same experiment

You will also need to download the trace analysis program. You can then run analyze.py, passing either an individual trace file or a directory of trace files as a command line argument. The program will create a stats directory in the same location as the trace file (or trace directory). stats will contain .txt files with the calculated metrics. The code for some of our newer calculations was written quickly (particularly the file size CDF graphs), so view the data with caution until we have time to have multiple people carefully review all of our calculations.

Note: the analysis program does not consider every possible type of system call, just those seen in our traces. Thus, if you want to use the analysis program on other traces, please make sure that you add code to process any additional system calls you see. The complete list of system calls used in a trace is given as a comment at the end of each sorted.txt file.

You can alternatively download individual traces using the links the below table.

Individual Traces

Click on the below links to download individual traces or to view various statistics:
iLife
iPhoto
iphoto_start400
iphoto_import400
iphoto_duplicate400
iphoto_edit400
iphoto_delete400
iphoto_view400
 iTunes
itunes_startsmall1
itunes_importsmall1
itunes_importmovie1
itunes_album1
itunes_movie1
 iMovie
imovie_start1
imovie_import1
imovie_add1
imovie_export1
iWork
Pages
pages_start15
pages_open15
pages_create15
pages_createphoto15
pages_pdf15
pages_pdfphoto15
pages_doc15
pages_docphoto15
 Numbers
numbers_start5
numbers_open5
numbers_createcol5
numbers_xls5
 Keynote
keynote_start20
keynote_play20
keynote_playphoto20
keynote_create20
keynote_createphoto20
keynote_ppt20
keynote_pptphoto20

Collecting New Traces

If you want to create your own traces, download the DTrace script and other post processing scripts here: utilities.tar.gz.

Note: be careful and make sure the trace.d script records all the necessary system calls if you collect a new trace. The script only records system calls that are used by the tasks we looked at in our study. For example, if your application uses the readv system call, it is important that you write code that records and processes that call. The DTrace script prints a comment at the end of every trace that lists every system call that is used, so you can determine if any additional is handling for your workload.