From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 5355 invoked by alias); 1 Nov 2006 18:06:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 5337 invoked by uid 22791); 1 Nov 2006 18:06:12 -0000 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.4 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from e36.co.us.ibm.com (HELO e36.co.us.ibm.com) (32.97.110.154) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:06:00 +0000 Received: from westrelay02.boulder.ibm.com (westrelay02.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.11]) by e36.co.us.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.12.11) with ESMTP id kA1I5pov002966 for ; Wed, 1 Nov 2006 13:05:51 -0500 Received: from d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (d03av02.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.168]) by westrelay02.boulder.ibm.com (8.13.6/8.13.6/NCO v8.1.1) with ESMTP id kA1I5ojs511148 for ; Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:05:51 -0700 Received: from d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.3) with ESMTP id kA1I5nVj004391 for ; Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:05:50 -0700 Received: from [9.67.119.243] (wecm-9-67-119-243.wecm.ibm.com [9.67.119.243]) by d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id kA1I5lmj004240; Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:05:48 -0700 Message-ID: <4548EA74.7000105@us.ibm.com> Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:12:00 -0000 From: David Wilder User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Smith CC: "Frank Ch. Eigler" , ken@odtv.com, "'Badari Pulavarty'" , systemtap@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: Anyone tried SystemTap with the latest RHEL5 Beta refresh References: <20061101013734.GU4978@redhat.com> <017f01c6fd83$da5ed930$0301a8c0@wxp1mbl1> <4548DB65.5020202@us.ibm.com> <4548D711.2060904@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4548D711.2060904@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact systemtap-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: systemtap-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2006-q4/txt/msg00315.txt.bz2 David Smith wrote: > David Wilder wrote: > >> Frank Ch. Eigler wrote: >> >>> "Ken Robson" writes: >>> >>> >>> >>>> [...] To me it is valid to install minus the debuginfo files on >>>> almost all Production hosts. I am experimenting with developing my >>>> scripts off box with my cache directory set to an exported read-only >>>> NFS share which is then mounted as the module cache directory on my >>>> Production boxes [...] >>>> >>> >>> >>> More than that - on such production boxes, you will need to install >>> only the "staprun" (formerly "stapd") binary, now separated into a >>> systemtap-runtime RPM. For the moment though please be careful with >>> building probes for mismatching machines: the module address tables >>> are not yet fully adaptive. >>> >>> - FChE >>> >>> >> The cached debuginfo is a really cool concept. > > > You got a bit confused here. The debuginfo isn't cached, the > systemtap compiled modules are cached. Thanks for the clarification. > >> But it wont solve the problem of simplifying the use of systemtap for >> the customers. From a support standpoint if a customer system is >> missing a debug tool (or some dependent component) the tool may as >> well not exist! If it comes down to fix the debug tool or find >> another approach to solve the customers problem the later will >> generally win. To make stap successful we need to get people using it >> and providing feedback, let's make it as easy as possible to use. All >> dependencies must be installed when selecting a product for install. > > > In general, I certainly agree with you that all dependencies must be > installed. > > However, systemtap (and any other program that would like to use > debuginfo) is a special case. From my understanding, there is a > policy (perhaps unwritten) that no rpm can require a debuginfo rpm. > Plus, even if we did require the debuginfo rpm, it still wouldn't get > installed automatically. For FC[56], the debuginfo yum repositories > are disabled by default. For RHEL[34], the debuginfo RPMs aren't > available from a RHN channel, they have to be downloaded separately > (from my vague understanding which could be wrong). In addition, > debuginfo RPMs are not present on RHEL/FC install media. So, from a > current logistical point of view, if the systemtap RPM required the > kernel debuginfo RPM, systemtap itself could never be installed > because of missing dependencies that could never be met. > > Currently, using systemtap isn't much different than using gdb. Let's > assume that /bin/ls keeps crashing on you for some strange reason that > you'd like to debug. You are going to need to download/install the > coreutils debuginfo RPM, then use gdb to debug your problem. > Yea but gdb has other uses then debugging coreutils. SystemTap is only used to instrument the kernel. The more I think about it, installing the debug info package at install time(ignoring the packaging issue for now) solves only half the problem. The other half is, when the kernel is updated and the debuginfo package is not, then stap breaks. I bet I'll get a lot of objections to this suggestion.... But here goes.. Why not package the debuginfo "vmlinux" with the kernel rpm? Just the vmlinux, keep all the debug modules in the debuginfo package. I bet that most of the users of stap are debugging the kernel proper, and vmlinux is all that is needed. Sure this will increase the size of the kernel package by about 40Meg, but the full debug info package is closer to 150Meg. This would also solve the same issue for kdump/crash.. -- David Wilder IBM Linux Technology Center Beaverton, Oregon, USA dwilder@us.ibm.com (503)578-3789