Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] DTrace

["Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche at redhat dot com>]

Hi -

On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 07:13:27PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 01:06:32PM -0700, Roland McGrath wrote:
> > Like I said, the essential command is eu-strip -f.  It is simple to use.
> > 
> > For one's own local hacking purposes, there is no real reason to bother
> > with strip-to-file complexities.  You can just copy the unstripped files
> > before stripping them.  [...]

> Well, actually, it *does* matter, at least to me.  [...]  I might
> have five, six, seven, eight or more kernels installed.  And on a
> number of my systems, the amount of space on the parititons where
> /boot and /lib live can't take the space demands of compiling the
> kernel and modules with -g.

You simply misunderstood Roland's suggestion: that you save the
unstripped copies of vmlinux etc. someplace - anyplace - for
systemtap's use, and that you strip (as normal) the pieces that go
into /boot.  No one is asking you to enlarge your boot partition.


> [...] And one of the major flaws of the Linux's RAS tools is that
> the LKML development community doesn't use them; and to the extent
> that tapsets would be written more quickly if they are easy for
> kernel developers [...]

Point taken (and applies broadly to all the other RAS tools).


> In the past two years, I've on average tried Systemtap every 9
> months or so, and each time, I'd hit a different annoying roadblock,
> and then I was so busy I would move on to a more productive way of
> solving my problems. [...]

Hearing about your problems at the time could well have steered us
toward focusing on their solution.

There has been a bit of a vicious circle in play: apparent lack of
interest from the LKML community drives focus toward on customery
problem areas, which then apparently disappoints (members of) the LKML
community into more disinterst.  Let's break this.


- FChE