Using abrt to automatically download and install debuginfo

[Chris Meek]

On 08/09/2011 02:16 PM, Chris Meek wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I recently added a feature (PR12773, commit 
> e1e8b44e3293090f29262beb1b0762951b833e62)
> to SystemTap that uses abrt to automatically download and install 
> needed debuginfo. I will be
> extending the functionality in the near future to include command line 
> options to control the
> use of the feature (such as whether or not to use it, or to set a 
> timeout interval).
>
> In my tests, I found that a small debuginfo file of around 0.2MB took 
> only an average of
> 1.34 seconds to download and install, whereas a larger file of 76.5 MB 
> took around 6.4
> minutes to download and install. Of course these times are heavily 
> dependant on the
> internet connection, so they should only be taken as a rough ballpark 
> estimate.
>
> Example:
>
> $ stap -e 'probe process("/bin/gzip").function("*") { log(pp()) }'
>
> If the gzip debuginfo is not already installed, SystemTap will call
> "abrt-action-install-debuginfo-to-abrt-cache" to first download and 
> then install the "gzip.debug"
> file into: "/var/cache/abrt-di/usr/lib/debug/" . SystemTap will then 
> look in this directory to use the
> debuginfo for the probe.
>
> If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd like to hear them.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
Hi all,

I am working on the command line option for this feature and I would be 
grateful for
your input. I will sketch out what I am thinking, and if you have any 
thoughts on how it
could be better, please let me know.

So by default the feature will be enabled, with a timeout of 30 seconds, 
and it will pass '-y' to abrt,
causing it to continue without user interaction.

The option "--download-debuginfo=" will have the following possible values:
no                //to disable it
<###>       //to change the timeout to the given value
ask              //to not pass '-y' to abrt, so it will ask for user 
confirmation before downloading

It could also be set up so that if no value is given (i.e. just 
"--download-debuginfo") it would continue
without a timeout, or it could have a "no-timeout" explicit value.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Chris