Sowhat: global analyzer for dynamic library dependencies

Sowhat is now on SourceForge: http://sowhat.sourceforge.net! Login there and help with the effort!

• Download most recent version (0.4.2Alpha).
• Read sowhat documentation..
• Read LISA-2001 'sowhat' paper in html or postscript.
• Read BBLISA 2001 slides (Nov 14 2001).
• Read LISA 2001 slides (Dec 6 2001).

Description

Sowhat is an analysis tool for analyzing dependencies between programs and dynamic libraries in a Solaris environment. It also analyzes dependencies due to hard links, symlinks, scripts, and configuration files. Sowhat runs in two phases.

• First one runs it in the background in a 'discovery' mode in which it discovers dependencies and files them in a dependency database.
• Then one can query against that database to determine several things about an evolving system:
  • Which programs use a library.
  • All aliases for a specific file or directory, either hard or soft links.
  • A list of all files that reference a specific path.
  • What changed between the data-gathering run and the present.

Sowhat is useful for a variety of tasks, including:

• Asking 'what-if' questions about potential upgrades: what programs may change function or fail if I delete or update this library?
• Analyzing failures by comparing system configuration to a pre-established baseline: what change could have caused this behavior?

The former tool sothere for analyzing symlink dependencies is now part of sowhat.

For more information, please email me.

Yizhan Sun (ysun@cs.tufts.edu)
Alva L. Couch (couch@cs.tufts.edu)
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Tufts University
161 College Avenue
Medford, MA 02155