************************************************************************** * The following are additional notes on all programs that print a colorized * ("colourised") output, *color*.d. * * $Id: ALLcolors_notes.txt,v 1.1.1.1 2015/09/30 22:01:09 christos Exp $ * * COPYRIGHT: Copyright (c) 2007 Brendan Gregg. ************************************************************************** * The colors aren't working, I see rubbish characters Try using a terminal that supports colors, such as gnome-terminal or dtterm. The following text should test the spectrum of colors for your terminal. Read this using "more" or "cat" (not "less" or "vim") to check if your terminal will print colors, and what they will look like: Color Test String Dark Background --------------------------------------------------------- black color test color test red color test color test green color test color test yellow color test color test blue color test color test magenta color test color test cyan color test color test white color test color test and now for a test of attributes: Color Bold Faint --------------------------------------------------------- black color test color test red color test color test green color test color test yellow color test color test blue color test color test magenta color test color test cyan color test color test white color test color test * Why so much green and violet in the toolkit scripts? As DTrace can examine the entire software stack, it is conceivable that your script could print events from many different layers each with their own color. Color scripts in the DTraceToolkit generally start by tracing two layers, with extra layers added by the end user as needed (you). The general plan is: Software Layer Example Provider Color ------------------------------------------------------- Dynamic Language perl violet User Library pid:libperl blue OS Library pid:libc cyan System Calls syscall green Kernel and Drivers fbt red How these colors will look will depend on your terminal software. Useful variations can be made, for example using red/bold for kernel abstraction providers (io, vminfo, ...); and red/faint for raw kernel tracing (fbt). The color examples in this toolkit usually trace the syscall and dynamic language layers, hense the green and violet. * I don't like the choosen terminal colors / your colors suck It should be easy to customize them by tweaking the script. I've tried to use the following convention for declaring colors in D scripts: dtrace:::BEGIN { color_shell = "\033[2;35m"; /* violet, faint */ color_line = "\033[1;35m"; /* violet, bold */ color_syscall = "\033[2;32m"; /* green, faint */ color_off = "\033[0m"; /* default */ } That way, printf() statements can print these string variables to turn on and off colors, as needed. These strings contain an escape sequence to inform your terminal software to change the output color. Customizations can be made by tweaking the variables; refer to documentation for your terminal software to see what numbers will print what colors. For my terminal (dtterm), the numbers are (from dtterm(5)): Attributes 1 bold 2 faint Forground colors 30 black 31 red 32 green 33 yellow 34 blue 35 magenta 36 cyan 37 white Background colors 40 black 41 red ... etc, as above * I'd like to use this colored output on a website. The easiest way would be to change the script to output HTML rather than escape sequences. eg: dtrace:::BEGIN { color_shell = ""; /* violet, faint */ color_line = ""; /* violet, bold */ color_syscall = ""; /* green, faint */ color_off = ""; /* default */ } Other tweaks can be made to either print the output in a
 tagged block;
or as seperate lines ending in 
along with changing the font to be fixed width.