Examples from www.dtracebook.com

[Mark Johnston]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 04:26:54PM -0800, hiren panchasara wrote:
> $ sudo dtrace -n 'proc:::exec-success { trace(curpsinfo->pr_psargs); }'
> dtrace: description 'proc:::exec-success ' matched 1 probe
> CPU     ID                    FUNCTION:NAME
>   5  48876                    :exec-success   /bin/sh /usr/bin/man ls
>   2  48876                    :exec-success   /sbin/sysctl -n hw.machine_arch
>   6  48876                    :exec-success   /sbin/sysctl -n hw.machine
>   0  48876                    :exec-success   /usr/bin/locale
>   7  48876                    :exec-success   /usr/bin/zcat
> /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz
>   2  48876                    :exec-success   head -1
>   1  48876                    :exec-success   tbl
>   6  48876                    :exec-success   groff -S -P-h -Wall
> -mtty-char -man -Tascii -P-c
>   7  48876                    :exec-success   /usr/bin/zcat
> /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz
>   3  48876                    :exec-success   less
>   3  48876                    :exec-success   troff -Wall -mtty-char
> -man -Tascii
>   7  48876                    :exec-success   grotty -h -c
> 
> 
>   6  48876                    :exec-success   top
>   7  48876                    :exec-success   ps awwux
>   7  48876                    :exec-success   iostat
>   5  48876                    :exec-success   vmstat 1
>   4  48876                    :exec-success   bash
>   4  48876                    :exec-success   whois
>   5  48876                    :exec-success   whoami
>   4  48876                    :exec-success   devinfo
>   4  48876                    :exec-success   dmesg
>   6  48876                    :exec-success   pciconf -lv
> 
> I am getting interesting info only when "man" is executed and not for
> any other command. What does that tell me? How is man special? Other
> programs must also be doing exec(2), no?

/usr/bin/man is a shell script. You'll see similar output for any
executable that starts with a shebang.