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Re: [RFC] Hardware Breakpoint support for systemtap translator




Prerna Saxena wrote:
Hi,
The attached set patches enable systemtap translator to probe kernel hardware breakpoints on x86.
It introduces the following language constructs :


1. probe kernel.data(ADDRESS).write {....} : To probe writes at the given address
2. probe kernel.data(ADDRESS).rw {....} : To probe read & write access to the given address.
3. probe kernel.data("SYMBOL").write {....}
4. probe kernel.data("SYMBOL").rw {....} : Similar to 1,2, but using a symbol name as argument.


These are agnostic to dwarf/debuginfo and depend on the hardware breakpoint infrastructure for resolving symbols.

Things that remain to be done :
1. Translator support for probing hardware breakpoints on other architectures (ppc/s390 etc)
2. Implementation of userspace hardware breakpoints.


I'm still testing it...Looking for comments and feedback :-)

Forgot to mention that the underlying kernel infrastructure is in -tip. Would advise ppl to try these patches on systems running -tip kernel only :-)

--
Prerna Saxena

Linux Technology Centre,
IBM Systems and Technology Lab,
Bangalore, India



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