Re: SystemTap on Ubuntu 7.04 i386

[fche at redhat dot com (Frank Ch. Eigler)]

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