Using abrt to automatically download and install debuginfo

[Chris Meek <cmeek at redhat dot com>]

Hi all,

I recently added a feature (PR12773, commit 
e1e8b44e3293090f29262beb1b0762951b833e62)
to SystemTap that uses abrt to automatically download and install needed 
debuginfo. I will be
extending the functionality in the near future to include command line 
options to control the
use of the feature (such as whether or not to use it, or to set a 
timeout interval).

In my tests, I found that a small debuginfo file of around 0.2MB took 
only an average of
1.34 seconds to download and install, whereas a larger file of 76.5 MB 
took around 6.4
minutes to download and install. Of course these times are heavily 
dependant on the
internet connection, so they should only be taken as a rough ballpark 
estimate.

Example:

$ stap -e 'probe process("/bin/gzip").function("*") { log(pp()) }'

If the gzip debuginfo is not already installed, SystemTap will call
"abrt-action-install-debuginfo-to-abrt-cache" to first download and then 
install the "gzip.debug"
file into: "/var/cache/abrt-di/usr/lib/debug/" . SystemTap will then 
look in this directory to use the
debuginfo for the probe.

If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

Cheers,
Chris