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Re: Systemtap for NFSv4


On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 08:43 -0700, Gerrit Huizenga wrote:
> Trond, Trond, Trond:  My answers are basically pfeh, Pfeh, and PFEH!

"...Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of ELDERBERRIES!"
       (Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail)

> :)
> 
> Comments interspersed...

Ah, but you appear to be missing an important point. Tony was asking if
we wanted to _replace_ the current set of dprintk()s with systemtap. I'm
just saying that I'm not going to start throwing dprintks until we have
a viable replacement. SystemTap is not (yet?) convincing as a candidate
for that role.

Note: if we do want to replace dprintks with SystemTap, then I think
that another precondition would be that we include the main systemtap
debugging scripts in Linus' tree.

Cheers,
  Trond

> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:17:52 +0200, Tony Reix wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Can you answer the following questions asked by Trond Myklebust (NFSv4
> > client) ?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Tony
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I see several conditions that would need to be fulfilled before we even
> > start to consider that:
> > 
> >  1) SystemTap would have to go into most (all?) distributions.
>  
> Getting there.  Why wait.  Just like all other things open-source,
> get in on the development, be one of the first to use cool toys,
> and YES, systemtap is heading there.  And, if you find a distro that
> doesn't have it, ask here and suggest they include it.  This is OPEN
> source, after all.  ;-)
> 
> >  2) There must be support for _all_ processor architectures: I'm not
> > sure that they all have kprobes support for instance.
> 
> Oh, you know better than that!  All 38 processor architectures (okay,
> I forgot the actual number)?  Again, when you find one that doesn't
> work, let the arch maintainers know.  kprobes supports most of the
> mainstream archs today, nothing fundamental standing in the way of
> SystemTap supporting all of those.  When you find one that you care
> about that doesn't work, let this list or the arch maintainer know.
> 
> >  3) The NFS code would have to stabilise considerably: if the code to be
> > debugged keeps moving around, then maintaining a parallel set of
> > SystemTap scripts would be a nightmare.
> 
> SystemTap can help stabilize the code!  It gives end users the ability
> to help debug things without having your genius downloaded into their
> Treo.  You'll get more intelligent bug reports and can ask for more
> detail as generated by SystemTap.  Win-Win, I say!
> 
> gerrit


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