Minutes of SystemTap Conference Call, Sept. 29, 2005

[Kevin Stafford <kevinrs at us dot ibm dot com>]

Minutes of SystemTap Conference Call, Sept. 29, 2005

Participants:
IBM:
       Ananth Mavinakayanahalli (mananth@in.ibm.com -- Boston)
       Jim Keniston (jkenisto@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
       Hien Nguyen (nguyhien@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
       Kevin Stafford (kevinrs@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
       Prasanna Panchamukhi (prasanna@in.ibm.com -- Bangalore)
       Maneesh Soni (maneesh@in.ibm.com -- Bangalore)
Red Hat:
       Graydon Hoare (graydon@redhat.com -- Vancouver)
       Elena Zannoni (ezannoni@redhat.com -- Boston)
Intel:
       Josh Stone (joshua.i.stone@intel.com -- Santa Clara)
Hitachi:
       Satoshi Oshima (soshima@redhat.com)

Actions Required (ARs):
>From 5/19/05:

22. Rusty: Look into x86_64 limitation re: temporary disarming of
reentrant probes.

23. Jim, Martin: Ensure that the runtime's stack-trace feature works
appropriately when there are return probes in the call stack.
[Update: Martin is working on this.  Jim will prototype an improvement
whereby the saved IP is updated before the handler is called.]

>From 6/9/05:
26. Rusty/Brad: Forward email address of Intel test person to Jay
Turner.  [Update: As of 7/7/05, Brad hasn't done this.  Did Rusty?]

>From 6/23/05:
30. Rusty: Review Will's rendition of Rusty's test that exercises
probes on a wide variety of instruction types.  [Update: As of 7/7/05,
Will still needs to hear back from Rusty.]

39. Ananth: Summarize the status of the ppc64 runtime port for Martin.
[Update 8/30/05: Resolution is Replaced by #76.  Otherwise done.]

>From 7/28/05:
41. Anil: Post a summary of known djprobes implementation issues.

>From 8/11/05:
44. Tom: Automate relayfs tests and post them to mailing list.
[Update: In progress]

>From 8/18/05:

53. Anil: Test RCU-based SMP scalability feature on ia64.
[Update: Results for 4x IA64 box posted to ML 9/19/2005.
Will continue testing on 32 way machine and post to ML]

>From 8/25/05:

55. Elena: Investigate approaches to making the full SystemTap bug
list available to SystemTap developers outside Red Hat.

56. Will: Integate RH testsuite as part of std distro tests (rather
than local system testing). [DONE]

>From 9/8/05:

57. Martin: Runtime build issues fix.
   [Update: Martin will unlink documentation from Runtime webpage;
   Kevin will post some SystemTap documentation to the SystemTap
   website. See also AR #83]

>From 9/15/05:

63. Will: post howto mail on running the test module from CVS to SystemTap
   ML. [DONE: Posted to ML 9/29/2005]

64. Masami Hiramatsu: post new djprobes patches to SystemTap ML for review.
   [DONE: Posted to ML 9/29/2005]

72. Jim: post user-space return probes design document.
[Update: Jim has posted to Prasanna for internal review]

>From 9/22/05:

73. Prasanna: post user space probes paper to ML
   [Update: Will post to ML after 10/11-14/05 conference]

74. Ananth: post kprobes RCU patches to LKML, contingent upon resolution of
BZ# 1345 and possible others.

76. Hien: post dumpstack routine that solves kallsyms_lookup PPC issue.

77. Frank: post prototype to do symbol lookup in the translator. 
(alternative
   to #76)

78. Vara: Correspond with Elena about the next face-2-face meeting.

79. Hien: Update install directions for SystemTap, commit to src/ in CVS.
   [DONE]

80. Kevin: Write arch agnostic return value function, commit to src/ in CVS.
   [DONE]

>From 9/29/05:

81. Jim: Follow up with owners of AR's 22,30,41,44,

82: Josh: Follow up with owner of AR 26

83: Kevin: Post SystemTap documentation, mirror examples on website.

Much of the meeting consisted of an AR review.

Hien, Ananth, and Anil continue work characterizing kretprobe deadlock bug,
possible solution is to put embargo on certain kernel functions.

Dangerous functions to probe should be tracked at BZ #1235.

--
Kevin Stafford
DES 2 | MS 2M3
Beaverton - OR
Linux Technology Center
IBM Systems & Technology
Phone: 1-503-578-3039
Email: kevinrs@us.ibm.com