sysdiagnose(1) BSD General Commands Manual sysdiagnose(1)NAME
sysdiagnose — gathers system-wide diagnostic information helpful in
investigating system performance issues.
SYNOPSIS
sysdiagnose -h
sysdiagnose [-f results_directory] [-t] [-q] [-b] [process_name | pid]
DESCRIPTION
sysdiagnose tool gathers system diagnostic information helpful in inves‐
tigating system performance issues. A great deal of information is har‐
vested, spanning system state and configuration. sysdiagnose needs to be
run as root. sysdiagnose can be triggered upon pressing a special key
chord; this is currently Control-Option-Command-Shift-Period.
What sysdiagnose Collects:
· A spindump of the system
· Several seconds of fs_usage ouput
· Several seconds of top output
· Data about kernel zones
· Status of loaded kernel extensions
· Resident memory usage of user processes
· All system logs, kernel logs, opendirectory log, windowserver
log, and log of power management events
· A System Profiler report
· All spin and crash reports
· Disk usage information
· I/O Kit registry information
· Network status
· If a specific process is supplied as an argument: list of mal‐
loc-allocated buffers in the process's heap is collected
· If a specific process is supplied as an argument: data about
unreferenced malloc buffers in the process's memory is col‐
lected
· If a specific process is supplied as an argument: data about
the virtual memory regions allocated in the process
OPTIONS-h Print full usage.
-f results_directory
Specify the directory where the results will be stored. The
default results directory is /var/tmp.
-q Skips calling footprint.
-t Enable "Thorough Mode". See below.
-b Do not show the resulting archive in a Finder window upon com‐
pletion.
process_name | pid
If a single process appears to be slowing down the system, pass‐
ing in the process name or ID as the argument gathers additional
process-specific diagnostic data.
THOROUGH MODE
sysdiagnose can be run in a "Thorough Mode" in which standard data is
gathered as well as a kernel trace. Enabling "Thorough Mode" for the com‐
mand-line sysdiagnose and key-chord sysdiagnose are independent and are
performed as follows:
For "Thorough Mode" in the command-line sysdiagnose use the "-t" flag.
To enable "Thorough Mode" for special key-chord launches of sysdiagnose
execute "touch /var/tmp/.thoroughsysdiagnose"
To disable "Thorough Mode" for special key-chord launches of sysdiagnose
execute "rm /var/tmp/.thoroughsysdiagnose"
Note:
Gathering the kernel trace can increase the size of sysdiagnose output by
hundreds of MB as well as increase the time for sysdiagnose to complete.
EXIT STATUS
sysdiagnose exits with status 0 if there were no internal errors encoun‐
tered during the diagnostic, or >0 when an error unrelated to external
state occurs or unusable input is provided by the user.
Darwin June 5, 2024 Darwin