Perl User-Space Markers

Some work has been done in Perl to include support for SystemTap user-space markers. The Perl user-space markers are enabled in Fedora 15 and allow SystemTap to probe the start and completion of each Perl function. The Perl user-space probes are:

perl.sub.call sub:string filename:string lineno:long
perl.sub.return sub:string filename:string lineno:long

Using Perl User-Space Markers

To use the Perl user-space markers on a Fedora you will need:

RPMs:
- perl
- perl-devel
- systemtap
Membership to the stapdev group (or root access)
A uprobes module built for the currently running kernel
- (SystemTap will print instruction on how to build the uprobes module if one is not currently available)

Examples Scripts for Perl Probing

Short example scripts:

tracing perl function calls, perl-example.stp