rpcboard is a visualization tool that collects and reconstructs distributed traces in real time, from client/server logs.

This project was developed for CS244B: Distributed Systems, Spring 2020.

Looking for the project at the time of submission? Check out commit hash 68cd222.

Symbolic links for the rpcboard and rpcboard-trace commands are provided in the root directory of the project. You can add them to your path per Terminal session (allowing easy execution of the commands below) by running export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd) (set PATH $PATH (pwd) on fish). Two scripts are provided in the repo under the name add_scripts, for that purpose:

source add_scripts.fish

If you want a more permanent solution, you can modify your shell's configuration file accordingly.

First, start a rpcboard instance on localhost:8080:

rpcboard -p 8080 -s 6006

This boots up a log server that will accept streaming connections from nodes you want to monitor on port 8080 and serve the dashboard on port 6006. Now, assuming you have a distributed application you want to profile (see /examples for some applications you can trace), you can wrap the commands which start its nodes inside:

rpcboard-trace -p 8080 [command ...]

This convenience wrapper connects to the log server on port 8080, sets necessary trace flags, then forks a child process that runs your command, with any supplied args/flags, and pipes stderr via socket to the log server.

Once everything's set up, you can go to localhost:6006 to watch your distributed system go!

Developed using Node v12.14.1.

See the documentation for all the components, as well as guides for getting started developing.

• Frontend
• Backend
• RPC