lat_syscall.8

.\" $Id$
.TH LAT_SYSCALL 8 "$Date$" "(c)1994 Larry McVoy" "LMBENCH"
.SH NAME
lat_syscall - time simple entry into the operating system
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B lat_syscall
[
.I "-P <parallelism>"
]
[
.I "-W <warmups>"
]
[
.I "-N <repetitions>"
]
.I "null|read|write|stat|fstat|open"
[
.I file
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.TP
null
measures how long it takes to do 
.IR getppid ().
We chose
.IR getppid ()
because in all UNIX variants we are aware of, it requires a round-trip
to/from kernel space and the actual work required inside the kernel is
small and bounded.
.TP
read
measures how long it takes to read one byte from \f(CB/dev/zero\fP.  
Note that some operating systems do not support \f(CB/dev/zero\fP.  
.TP
write
times how long it takes to write one byte to \f(CB/dev/null\fP.  This
is useful as a lower bound cost on anything that has to interact with
the operating system.
.TP
stat
measures how long it takes to 
.IR stat ()
a file whose inode is already cached.
.TP
fstat
measures how long it takes to 
.IR fstat ()
an open file whose inode is already cached.
.TP
open
measures how long it takes to 
.IR open ()
and then
.IR close()
a file.
.SH OUTPUT
Output format is 
.sp
.ft CB
Null syscall: 67 microseconds
.ft
.SH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Funding for the development of
this tool was provided by Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
lmbench(8).
.SH "AUTHOR"
Carl Staelin and Larry McVoy
.PP
Comments, suggestions, and bug reports are always welcome.