Platform-dependent issues on "stable" (1.7.1) systemtap in Debian Wheezy

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi, Maxim -


maxvt wrote:

> I'm looking at an issue with the stable version of systemtap (1.7.1)
> on Wheezy

(Note that I can't speak for Debian packager folks.)


> and hitting an issue only when running on i686 (x86_64 works fine) -
> a specific probe (tty_read) is apparently getting its parameters
> wrong and gives a kernelspace memory access error.

Is systemtap looking for the parameters in the wrong spot, or are the
values perhaps not yet available (not yet paged in)?  Have you tried
prologue-searching mode (stap -P), or statement probes?


> [...] Does the Debian version work with a specific kernel
> version/arch, or is it expected to work on any kernel package
> released by the distro?

Very roughly speaking, systemtap works with any kernel same age or
older than that systemtap version; access to that kernel's debugging
symbols may be required, depending on the probes in the script.


> [...]  Is it worth pursuing the resolution on the stable version, or
> should I just give up the idea of using packaged versions and build
> the latest version of systemtap, and perhaps the latest kernel too,
> on the same machine and toolset?

I'd probably try a newer systemtap with your preexisting kernel first.


- FChE