blktrace ======== This package contains two components: - blktrace, the utility to generate traces of a block device - several utilities (blkrawverify, verify_blkparse, blkparse, btt) to translate and analyse the data that was generated by blktrace The blktrace utility requires root permission, kernel support (a kernel patch for kernels older than 2.6.17-rc1, and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IO_TRACE enabled in the kernel configuration), and a mounted debugfs (mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug). Note specifically that the default Debian kernels prior to 2.6.23-1 do not have CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IO_TRACE set; you will therefore either need to upgrade to one of the latest debian kernels, or you'll have to to build your own custom kernel to use the IO trace functionality. Also, the debugfs is not mounted by default. The analysis utilities do not require anything but an tracefile that was generated by blktrace.