Operating System Debugging

To improve an operating system's performance, it is necessary to identify bottlenecks, which are situations in which a computer's performance is limited. This procedure is often called Debottlenecking or performance tuning. As such, the operating system must provide tools for monitoring running programs and general system behavior.

One way of tracking system behavior is by writing system activities into log files, as we've already seen.

A second way is for the operating system to provide system utilities that help monitor system activity.

• On Linux/Unix, one could issue commands that track system activities, such as top, which reports real-time statistics for current processes, or ps, which reports information for a single process or selection of processes.
• On Windows, one could launch the Task Manager application, which shows process statistics, as well as CPU, Memory, and Disk real-time performance.