SystemTap is a tracing and probing tool that allows users to study and monitor the activities of the computer system in fine detail. It provides information similar to the output of tools like netstat, ps, top, and iostat; however, SystemTap is designed to provide more filtering and analysis options for collected information. It can be used as a performance monitoring tool, and is most useful when other tools cannot precisely pinpoint a bottleneck in the system, requiring a deep analysis of kernel activity. Application developers can also use it to monitor, in finer detail, how their application behaves within the Linux system.
