Minutes of 9/8/05

[Kevin Stafford]

Minutes of SystemTap Conference Call, Sept. 8, 2005

Participants:
IBM:
        Ananth Mavinakayanahalli (mananth@in.ibm.com -- Boston)
        Jim Keniston (jkenisto@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
        Hien Nguyen (nguyhien@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
        Kevin Stafford (kevinrs@us.ibm.com -- Beaverton)
        Prasanna Panchamukhi (prasanna@in.ibm.com -- Bangalore)
        Maneesh Soni (maneesh@in.ibm.com -- Bangalore)
Red Hat:
        Elena Zannoni (ezannoni@redhat.com -- Boston)
        Will Cohen (wcohen@redhat.com -- Raleigh)
        Martin Hunt (hunt@redhat.com -- Seattle)
        Frank Eigler (fche@redhat.com -- Toronto)
        Graydon Hoare (graydon@redhat.com -- Vancouver)
Intel:
        Anil KeshavaMurthy (anil.s.keshavamurthy@intel.com -- Hillsboro)
        Josh Stone
        Charles Spirakis (charles.spirakis@intel.com)

Actions Required (ARs):
 >From 5/19/05:
19. Vara: Collect sample kprobes modules and post them to the
SystemTap web site.

22. Rusty: Look into x86_64 limitation re: temporary disarming of
reentrant probes.

23. Jim, Martin: Ensure that the runtime's stack-trace feature works
appropriately when there are return probes in the call stack.
[Update: Martin is working on this.  Jim will prototype an improvement
whereby the saved IP is updated before the handler is called.]

 >From 6/9/05:
26. Rusty/Brad: Forward email address of Intel test person to Jay
Turner.  [Update: As of 7/7/05, Brad hasn't done this.  Did Rusty?]

 >From 6/23/05:
30. Rusty: Review Will's rendition of Rusty's test that exercises
probes on a wide variety of instruction types.  [Update: As of 7/7/05,
Will still needs to hear back from Rusty.]

 >From 7/7/05:
39. Ananth: Summarize the status of the ppc64 runtime port for Martin.
[Update 8/17/05: Jose Santos of the IBM pSeries performance team will
complete the port.]

 >From 7/28/05:
41. Anil: Post a summary of known djprobes implementation issues.

 >From 8/4/05:
43. Prasanna: Post work on user-space probes.  [Update: Design is
under review at IBM.  This is deferred until after current SystemTap
test/debug push.]

 >From 8/11/05:
44. Tom: Automate relayfs tests and post them to mailing list.
[Update: In progress]

 >From 8/18/05:
48. Elena, Vara: Manage planning of next face-to-face meeting.

50. Jim: Characterize the problem(s) we've seen when probing
schedule().  [DONE: #1229 is fixed by Ananth and Anil.]

53. Anil: Test RCU-based SMP scalability feature on ia64.

 >From 8/25/05:
54. Vara: Report on availability of tech writer(s) at IBM to help
with user documentation.

55. Elena: Investigate approaches to making the full SystemTap bug
list available to SystemTap developers outside Red Hat.i

 >From 9/8/05:

56. Will: Integate RH testsuite as part of std distro tests (rather
than local system testing).

57. Martin: Runtime build issues fix.

58. Ananth: Work on resolving PPC64 runtime issues.

59: Elena: Send out editable OLS slides

60: Will: Check into CVS - htdocs

61: Kevin: Post FC4 SystemTap installation instructions.

Translator freeze is set for end of next week (9/16).

RH team is continuing work on resolving translator bugs.

The Runtime has build errors, Martin will look into a fix.

Ananth is taking over work on the PPC64 shortcomings:
        -runtime problems
        -elfutils (dot prefix)

Anil will start ia64 testing this week.

SystemTap Installation:
        casual fc4 users simply "yum update systemtap"
        developers: Kevin will post howto doc to build
                    SystemTap from src.

        RHEL4 users: "up2date systemtap"

Insufficient debug info breaks some core functionalities
when running a stock kernel.
Possible fix: use -g option (make cflags+=-g or make -g)

perfmon/perfctr wars are over. Api controversy is settled:
Michael would like to go forward with perfmon.

See CVS for new SystemTap samples.


-- 
Kevin Stafford
DES 2 | MS 2M3
Beaverton - OR
Linux Technology Center
IBM Systems & Technology
Phone: 1-503-578-3039
Email: kevinrs@us.ibm.com