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 investigating system performance issues. A great deal of information is
harvested, spanning system state and configuration. sysdiagnose needs to be run as root. sysdiagnose can be triggered upon pressing a spe-
cial key chord; this is currently Control-Option-Command-Shift-Period.
What sysdiagnose Collects:
o A spindump of the system
o Several seconds of fs_usage ouput
o Several seconds of top output
o Data about kernel zones
o Status of loaded kernel extensions
o Resident memory usage of user processes
o All system logs, kernel logs, opendirectory log, windowserver log, and log of power management events
o A System Profiler report
o All spin and crash reports
o Disk usage information
o I/O Kit registry information
o Network status
o If a specific process is supplied as an argument: list of malloc-allocated buffers in the process's heap is collected
o If a specific process is supplied as an argument: data about unreferenced malloc buffers in the process's memory is collected
o 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 completion.
process_name | pid
If a single process appears to be slowing down the system, passing 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
command-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 com-
plete.
EXIT STATUS
sysdiagnose exits with status 0 if there were no internal errors encountered during the diagnostic, or >0 when an error unrelated to external
state occurs or unusable input is provided by the user.
Darwin June 2, 2019 Darwin
