BEAM Tracing Cheatsheet (In Progress)

A no-nonsense quick reference for live production debugging and performance tuning on the BEAM. Everything in this guide is tested on real-world incidents and the latest OTP releases.

What's Inside (Preview)

🔍 Fast Diagnostics

• One-liner commands for inspecting processes and message queues
• Memory, mailbox, and message leak detection
• Live system checks with no downtime

🚨 Emergency Tracing

• redbug: How to set safe, production-friendly tracepoints
• Modern :erlang.trace/dbg usage for OTP 24+
• Network partition and process leak triage steps
• Safely profiling hot code paths—no restarts required

📊 Performance Analysis

• Quick CPU, scheduler, and load analysis
• I/O bottleneck tracing
• Lightweight log points for "what is my system doing right now?"

🛠️ Tool Reference

• Observer and Recon: essential shortcuts and recipes
• dbg patterns for both classic and modern releases
• Examples for integrating tracing with external dashboards

Status

• ✅ Content outlined and reviewed by BEAM experts
• ✅ Beta draft available
• 🔄 Field testing with real users
• ⏳ Design/layout pass in progress

Early Access

Download the Preview Draft Get notified about the full release (March 2025): Join the list

Why This Cheatsheet?

Most tracing docs are scattered, outdated, or dangerous for production. This guide focuses on:

• Tools you can actually use in prod (like redbug)
• Tracing patterns that are safe on live traffic
• Modern syntax for OTP 24+ (including atomic trace changes)
• Avoiding accidental system overloads

Expected Release

March 2025 — always free, printable, and mobile-friendly.

Send your best tracing recipes and tricks to help us improve it for everyone!

Practical, up-to-date, and community-driven—so you can debug live BEAM systems without breaking a sweat.