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Re: SystemTap on Ubuntu 7.04 i386
- From: fche at redhat dot com (Frank Ch. Eigler)
- To: Peter Bach <peterzbach at comcast dot net>
- Cc: Mike Mason <mmlnx at us dot ibm dot com>, SystemTAP <systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: 07 Jun 2007 10:51:17 -0400
- Subject: Re: SystemTap on Ubuntu 7.04 i386
- References: <46659C45.9010309@us.ibm.com> <46680618.4010705@comcast.net>
Peter Bach wrote:
> [...]
> > I'm wondering if we could get the distros to install the
> > vmlinux-only debuginfo by default. I'm guessing this would allow
> > 95% of systemtap to work out-of-box.
Maybe. Of the examples, tapsets, and test cases in the source tree,
only a few dozen refer to modules. Some of them are important: NFS,
SCSI.
> This is a great idea, to have the debuginfo available. The situation
> Innn find myself in is to load the distro (usually RedHat or SuSE),
> and use online repositories to keep up to date. The problem is that
> if a new kernel gets installed, I have to recompile with debuginfo
> just to get the usefulness of SystemTap.
Red Hat (RHEL and Fedora) each publish kernel-debuginfo RPMs for
downloading. yum can get 'em for you. Some distributions toss it
away during the build (Debian, Ubuntu), so those need policy changes.
> I don't know if this is a function of having the distros compile a
> version with debuginfo, or just making it available in the online
> repositories, but this would seem to be a big hurdle [...]
We have mentioned the possibility of creating a network server for
debugging information processing. The idea has not yet been fleshed
out though.
> The real value is that SystemTap is not only useful for solving
> problems in during the development cycle, but illuminates how Linux
> works under the covers, in the most dynamic way, when it is actually
> running. This is much more useful that perusing the code. The target
> audience for this is only every CS student on the planet.
Yeah - mind if I quote you on that? ;-)
- FChE