From a28974dcf725209ba1005d2f6514b28ea6b022e6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: William Cohen Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:27:20 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Introduction for SystemTap Beginner's Guide edits Correct the limitations section of the introduction. And do some minor edits to the introduction. --- .../en-US/Introduction.xml | 26 +++++++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/en-US/Introduction.xml b/doc/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/en-US/Introduction.xml index aa0678eac..33c71f6a3 100644 --- a/doc/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/en-US/Introduction.xml +++ b/doc/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/en-US/Introduction.xml @@ -16,7 +16,15 @@ - SystemTap is a tracing and probing tool that allows users to study and monitor the activities of the operating system (particularly, the kernel) in fine detail. It provides information similar to the output of tools like netstat, ps, top, and iostat; however, SystemTap is designed to provide more filtering and analysis options for collected information. + SystemTap is a tracing and probing tool that allows + users to study and monitor the activities of the + computer system (particularly, the kernel) in fine + detail. It provides information similar to the output + of tools like netstat, + ps, top, and + iostat; however, SystemTap is + designed to provide more filtering and analysis + options for collected information. @@ -70,7 +78,9 @@ In line with that, the main goals of the SystemTap Beginner's Guide are as follows: --> - To introduce users to SystemTap, familiarize them with its architecture, and provide setup instructions for all kernel types. + To introduce users to SystemTap, familiarize + them with its architecture, and provide setup + instructions. To provide pre-written SystemTap scripts for monitoring detailed activity in different components of the system, along with instructions on how to run them and analyze their output. @@ -146,9 +156,15 @@ - - Limitations - The current iteration of SystemTap allows for a multitude of options when probing kernel-space events. However, SystemTap's ability to probe user-space events is quite limited. At present, the developmental efforts of the SystemTap community are geared towards improving SystemTap's user-space probing capabilities. + Limitations +The current iteration of SystemTap allows for a multitude of +options when probing kernel-space events for a wide range of kernels. +However, SystemTap's ability to probe user-space events is dependent +on kernel support (the Utrace mechanism) that is unavailable in many kernels. +Thus, only some kernel versions support user-space probing. +At present, the developmental efforts of the SystemTap community +are geared towards improving SystemTap's user-space probing +capabilities. -- 2.43.5