We aim to identify the differences in Input/Output(I/O) behavior between multiple user programs through the inspection of system calls (i.e., requests made to the operating system). A typical program issues a large number of I/O requests to the operating system, thereby making the process of inspection challenging. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting a methodology to synthesize I/O system call traces into a specific type of directed graph, known as the Directly-Follows-Graph (DFG). Based on the DFG, we present a technique to compare the traces from multiple programs or different configurations of the same program, such that it is possible to identify the differences in the I/O behavior. We apply our methodology to the IOR benchmark, and compare the contentions for file accesses when the benchmark is run with different options for file output and software interface.
@article{arxiv.2408.07378,
title = {Inspection of I/O Operations from System Call Traces using Directly-Follows-Graph},
author = {Aravind Sankaran and Ilya Zhukov and Wolfgang Frings and Paolo Bientinesi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.07378},
year = {2025}
}