Optimizing Linux(R) Performance: A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools [Paperback]

Phillip G. Ezolt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Readers learn to use Linux's rich set of performance tools to make their applications run better. *Readers learn how to find and remove performance bottlenecks and increase the performance of Linux applications. *Useful format -- Reader learns tool's purpose, the tool's options, than a hands-on example of how to use the tool. *Author is key -- enhanced the industry standard and established benchmarks for greater performance.

From the Back Cover

• The first comprehensive, expert guide for end-to-end Linux application optimization

• Learn to choose the right tools—and use them together to solve real problems in real production environments

Superior application performance is more crucial than ever—and in today's complex production environments, it's tougher to ensure, too. If you use Linux, you have extraordinary advantages: complete source code access, plus an exceptional array of optimization tools. But the tools are scattered across the Internet. Many are poorly documented. And few experts know how to use them together to solve real problems. Now, one of those experts has written the definitive Linux tuning primer for every professional: Optimizing Linux® Performance.

Renowned Linux benchmarking specialist Phillip Ezolt introduces each of today's most important Linux optimization tools, showing how they fit into a proven methodology for perfecting overall application performance. Using realistic examples, Ezolt shows developers how to pinpoint exact lines of source code that are impacting performance. He teaches sysadmins and application developers how to rapidly drill down to specific bottlenecks, so they can implement solutions more quickly. You'll discover how to:

• Identify bottlenecks even if you're not familiar with the underlying system

• Find and choose the right performance tools for any problem

• Recognize the meaning of the events you're measuring

• Optimize system CPU, user CPU, memory, network I/O, and disk I/O—and understand their interrelationships

• Fix CPU-bound, latency-sensitive, and I/O-bound applications, through case studies you can easily adapt to your own environment

Install and use oprofile, the advanced systemwide profiler for Linux systems

If you're new to tuning, Ezolt gives you a clear and practical introduction to all the principles and strategies you'll need. If you're migrating to Linux, you'll quickly master Linux equivalents to the tools and techniques you already know. Whatever your background or environment, this book can help you improve the performance of all your Linux applications—increasingbusiness value and user satisfaction at the same time.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (March 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131486829
• ISBN-13: 978-0131486829
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #531,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Misleading title, July 26, 2005

By	Billy Antoniadis (Lexington, KY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Optimizing Linux(R) Performance: A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools (Paperback)

This book is good if you want to find bottlenecks in your system. If you are interested in finding a good book which helps you tweak your system for better performance (eg. web server performance tweaks vs. database server tweaks) keep looking. I think the title "Optimizing Linux Performance" is misleading.

Otherwise, if you are interested in learning how to analyze data from tools like vmstat, sar, or top, then it is worth the purchase.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Raising the Usability for (GNU) Linux(R) Performance Tools, June 20, 2006

By	Nils Valentin (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Optimizing Linux(R) Performance: A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools (Paperback)

[Review: long]

First about the title:

The title should have been just "A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools".
That would have been less missleading and most readers could have appreciated the debugging scenarios
at the end of the book more.

O.K now about the book itself:

I am currently a system administrator in a medium sized company (ca. 200 employees)
I am using different flavours of Linux since 5+ years (Debian, Mandrake, Suse, Redhat etc). Every now and
then I found several man pages sometimes hard to comprehend. Most man pages do describe available
options on their own but - unfortunately - they fail to deliver the big picture, including f.e. practical
samples of how to use those options in real life scenarios and how to evaluate (read) the output given
to the screen (or a file).

This is exactly where Ezolt comes in with the "Hands-on Guide" and ease the pain in a fantastic way.
Whats makes this book so indispensible is that it describes the below list of tools in a way
that demystifies many of the command line options and the screen clutter.
The book immediately became my best friend.

The book is with 350p quite compact (keep in mind the many tools described below) and that allows you
to take it with you onsite, while not being to heavy.
To really maximise the usage of the book I suggest to use little post-it like notes, so that you can
refer to them, when you are onsite and forgot the one or the other trick.
My post-it notes loose regularly the writing from the many tear (usage). ;-)

Note that many of the tools below are described 2 times or more within the book, depending on their
usage f.e. as CPU or Memory based investigation tool.

The book is somehow different from what I expected, but keep in mind that one book can seldom tackle
all issues and I believe Ezolt has striked a very good balance here.

Ezolt is describing many scenarios that probably most system admin came accross, but didnt know yet how to handle them.
Ezolt now gave them the tools to finally put them to good use in a wide area.

I give Ezolt both thumbs up alone for the fact that it is the first book out there that tackled that man page issue quite nicely
and "translated" those man pages including the refering command line interfaces in a for me readable format.


Well done !!


List of (mostly command line) tools described in the book (39):

For CPU + based troubleshooting (13):
vmstat
top
procinfo
gsm
mpstat
sar
oprofile
time
strace
ltrace
ps
ld.so
gprof

For Memory based troubleshooting (8):
free
slabtop
memprof
valgrind
kcachegrind
ipcs
iostat
lsof


For Network based troubleshooting (8):
miitool
ethtool
ifconfig
ip
gkrellm
iptraf
netstat
etherape

Utility tools (10):

bash
tee
script
watch
gnumeric
ldd
objdump
(f)grep
gdb
gcc

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could have just used man iostat/sar/vmsat/ps, June 15, 2006

By	Justin Cirelli "soleblazer" (Philadelphia PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Optimizing Linux(R) Performance: A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools (Paperback)

Let me start off by saying that this book is not really bad. It doesnt really give any wrong information, it is organized in fairly nice fashion, and for beginners its probably a great place to start. The title is a little misleading though. It doesnt really give a bit of advice on how to optimize Linux performance. It is merely a beginners language version of the man page for tools.

I was expecting something that would explain how to resolve thrashing or cpu usage issues, not simply give me a rundown on the tools that can find those situations. I found the cause, now what? This book doesnt help answer that question at all.