From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7177 invoked by alias); 30 Jun 2008 20:11:11 -0000 Received: (qmail 7169 invoked by uid 22791); 30 Jun 2008 20:11:11 -0000 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_SOFTFAIL X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from www.church-of-our-saviour.org (HELO thunker.thunk.org) (69.25.196.31) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:10:53 +0000 Received: from root (helo=closure.thunk.org) by thunker.thunk.org with local-esmtp (Exim 4.50 #1 (Debian)) id 1KDPhn-0005SP-Nr; Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:10:31 -0400 Received: from tytso by closure.thunk.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KDPhn-00064T-2z; Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:10:31 -0400 Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:19:00 -0000 From: Theodore Tso To: "Frank Ch. Eigler" Cc: ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, systemtap@sources.redhat.com Bcc: tytso@mit.edu Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] DTrace Message-ID: <20080630201031.GF7988@mit.edu> References: <20080630010423.GA7068@redhat.com> <20080630181959.GA7988@mit.edu> <20080630192533.GE21660@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080630192533.GE21660@redhat.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17+20080114 (2008-01-14) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@mit.edu X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on thunker.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Mailing-List: contact systemtap-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: systemtap-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2008-q2/txt/msg00810.txt.bz2 On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 03:25:33PM -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote: > > The problem is that kernel developers are often juggling multiple > > kernels, so kernel developers need to learn how to package up this > > bulky data as well. > > They shouldn't have to repackage it at all - just leave it in the > build tree. The problem is that I am often juggling multiple kernel builds, and so I don't want to keep the full build tree around. So I just want to extract out the specific files needed by Systemtap, especially becuase they are so bulky. So normally I actually do create specific packages for the kernels I use (so I can give them to others or put them on my server machines if they prove to be stable), and I want to be able to package up the debuginfo files as well --- and only exactly the debuginfo files which are needed to make systemtap work. Stupid question --- has anyone thought about writing tools to strip out specific debug information not needed by Systemtap? For example, I assume systemtap doesn't need the line number information, since you can't set probes on arbitrary line numbers (and even if you could, such tapsets would be so brittle that it wouldn't be funny); so would the debuginfo files be smaller if that information were stripped out? I understand that this would make the files less useful for kdump/crash, but for systemtap only users, it might be quite useful. What about stripping out the text segment of the object files, so you aren't storing the information twice on disk, or compressing the debuginfo files so they take up less room on disk? > > [...] since the Wiki is filled with assertions (echoed by Ulrich in > > the recent ksummit-discuss thread) about how Systemtap is a fast > > moving project, and why it's absolutely necessary to grab the latest > > bleeding edge sources from the git tree. > > That's been generally true - but that does not apply to elfutils. > Some of us run with rather old elfutils just fine. Hmm, well it doesn't work with the version of elfutils shipped with the latest (8.04) Ubuntu. Ah, now it does. The wiki didn't say anyting about needing --enable-staticdw, and I see with a recent commit from last Friday you don't even need to specify --enable-staticdw any more, it DTRT automatcally. Nice! Thanks for fixing this! - Ted