A guide on how to install Systemtap on an Ubuntu system (Gutsy+)
Contents
Get the systemtap package
Quite easy:
sudo apt-get install systemtap
Kernel support
The generic kernel comes with CONFIG_DEBUG_FS, CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL, CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO and CONFIG_KPROBES enabled, so no recompilation needed.
libdwfl needs an uncompressed, unstripped kernel image, so install the package linux-image-debug-<yourkernelversion>. The easiest way, if you use linux-image-generic meta-package:
sudo apt-get install linux-image-debug-generic
This will install /boot/vmlinux-debug-<yourkernelversion>.
Now create a symlink for vmlinux in /lib/modules:
sudo ln -s /boot/vmlinux-debug-$(uname -r) /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/vmlinux
Devel environment
Kernel headers and gcc are needed for module compilation, so if you have not done so, install them (assuming the usage of generic kernel again): libcap-dev needed for Systemtap packages > 0.6-1
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic gcc libcap-dev
Test & enjoy
stap -e 'probe kernel.function("sys_open") {log("hello world") exit()}'
hello world
Building SystemTap mainline
It's also simple to build SystemTap from source snapshots or from Git HEAD. (Tested on Hardy)
sudo apt-get install git-core dejagnu sudo apt-get build-dep systemtap cd path/to/systemtap ./configure --disable-pie make && sudo make install
Note: snapshots older than 2008-06-27 had trouble linking to the system libdw in the configure step. You can try "./configure --enable-staticdw" instead, or just download a newer snapshot.