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1<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
2<html>
3<head>
4 <title>Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation Manual</title>
5</head>
6 <body>
7
8<h1>Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation Manual</h1>
9
10Author : Mathieu Desnoyers, September 2005<br>
11Last update : January 21st, 2009<br>
12(originally known as the LTTng QUICKSTART guide)
13
14<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
15
16<ul>
17<li><a href="#intro" name="TOCintro">Introduction</a></li>
18<ul>
19<li><a href="#arch" name="TOCarch">Supported architectures</a></li>
20</ul>
21
22<li><a href="#section1" name="TOCsection1">Installing LTTng and LTTV from
23sources</a></li>
24<ul>
25<li><a href="#prerequisites" name="TOCprerequisites">Prerequisistes</li>
26<li><a href="#getlttng" name="TOCgetlttng">Getting the LTTng packages</li>
27<li><a href="#getlttngsrc" name="TOCgetlttngsrc">Getting the LTTng kernel sources</li>
28<li><a href="#installlttng" name="TOCinstalllttng">Installing a LTTng kernel</li>
29<li><a href="#editconfig" name="TOCeditconfig">Editing the system wide
30configuration</a>
31<li><a href="#getlttctl" name="TOCgetlttctl">Getting and installing the
32ltt-control package</li>
33<li><a href="#userspacetracing" name="TOCuserspacetracing">Userspace Tracing</li>
34<li><a href="#getlttv" name="TOCgetlttv">Getting and installing the LTTV package</ul>
35
36<li><a href="#section2" name="TOCsection2">Using LTTng and LTTV</a></li>
37<ul>
38<li><a href="#uselttvgui" name="TOCuselttvgui">Use graphical LTTV to control
39tracing and analyse traces</a></li>
40<li><a href="#uselttngtext" name="TOCuselttngtext">Use text mode LTTng to
41control tracing</a></li>
42<li><a href="#uselttvtext" name="TOCuselttvtext">Use text mode LTTV</a></li>
43<li><a href="#hybrid" name="TOChybrid">Tracing in "Hybrid" mode</a></li>
44<li><a href="#flight" name="TOCflight">Tracing in flight recorder mode</a></li>
45</ul>
46
47<li><a href="#section3" name="TOCsection3">Adding kernel and user-space
48instrumentation</a>
49<ul>
50<li><a href="#kerneltp" name="TOCkerneltp">Adding kernel instrumentation</a></li>
51<li><a href="#usertp" name="TOCusertp">Adding userspace instrumentation</a></li>
52</ul>
53
54<li><a href="#section4" name="TOCsection4">Creating Debian and RPM packages
55from LTTV</a></li>
56<ul>
57<li><a href="#pkgdebian" name="TOCpkgdebian">Create custom LTTV Debian
58<li><a href="#pkglttng" name="TOCpkglttng">Create custom LTTng packages</a></li>
59</ul>
60
61</ul>
62
63<hr />
64
65<h2><a href="#TOCintro" name="intro">Introduction</a></h2>
66<p>
67This document is made of five parts : the first one explains how
68to install LTTng and LTTV from sources, the second one describes the steps
69to follow to trace a system and view it. The third part explains
70briefly how to add a new trace point to the kernel and to user space
71applications. The fourth and last part explains how to create Debian or RPM
72packages from the LTTng and LTTV sources.
73<p>
74These operations are made for installing the LTTng 0.86 tracer on a linux 2.6.X
75kernel. You will also find instructions for installation of LTTV 0.12.x : the
76Linux Trace Toolkit Viewer.
77To see the list of compatibilities between LTTng, ltt-control, LTTV, please
78refer to :
79<a
80href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/svn/trunk/lttv/doc/developer/lttng-lttv-compatibility.html">LTTng+LTTV versions compatibility</a>
81
82The ongoing work had the Linux Kernel Markers integrated in the mainline Linux
83kernel since Linux 2.6.24 and the Tracepoints since 2.6.28. In its current
84state, the lttng patchset is necessary to have the trace clocksource, the
85instrumentation and the LTTng high-speed data extraction mechanism added to the
86kernel.
87
88<br>
89<br>
90<h3><a href="#TOCarch" name="arch">Supported architectures</a></h3>
91<br>
92LTTng :<br>
93<br>
94<li> x86 32/64 bits
95<li> PowerPC 32 and 64 bits
96<li> ARMv7 OMAP3
97<li> Other ARM (with limited timestamping precision, e.g. 1HZ. Need
98architecture-specific support for better precision)
99<li> MIPS
100<li> sh (partial architecture-specific instrumentation)
101<li> sparc64 (partial architecture-specific instrumentation)
102<li> s390 (partial architecture-specific instrumentation)
103<li> Other architectures supported without architecture-specific instrumentation
104and with low-resolution timestamps.<br>
105<br>
106<br>
107LTTV :<br>
108<br>
109<li> Intel 32/64 bits
110<li> PowerPC 32 and 64 bits
111<li> Possibly others. Takes care of endianness and type size difference between
112the LTTng traces and the LTTV analysis tool.
113
114<hr />
115
116
117<h2><a href="#TOCsection1" name="section1">Installation from sources</a></h2>
118<p>
119
120<h3><a href="#TOCprerequisites" name="prerequisites">Prerequisites</a></h3>
121<ul>
122<p>
123Tools needed to follow the package download steps :
124
125<li>wget
126<li>bzip2
127<li>gzip
128<li>tar
129
130<p>
131You have to install the standard development libraries and programs necessary
132to compile a kernel :
133
134<PRE>
135(from Documentation/Changes in the Linux kernel tree)
136Gnu C 2.95.3 # gcc --version
137Gnu make 3.79.1 # make --version
138binutils 2.12 # ld -v
139util-linux 2.10o # fdformat --version
140module-init-tools 0.9.10 # depmod -V
141</PRE>
142
143<p>
144You might also want to have libncurses5 to have the text mode kernel
145configuration menu, but there are alternatives.
146
147<p>
148Prerequisites for LTTV 0.x.x installation are :
149
150<PRE>
151gcc 3.2 or better
152gtk 2.4 or better development libraries
153 (Debian : libgtk2.0, libgtk2.0-dev)
154 (Fedora : gtk2, gtk2-devel)
155 note : For Fedora users : this might require at least core 3 from Fedora,
156 or you might have to compile your own GTK2 library.
157glib 2.4 or better development libraries
158 (Debian : libglib2.0-0, libglib2.0-dev)
159 (Fedora : glib2, glib2-devel)
160libpopt development libraries
161 (Debian : libpopt0, libpopt-dev)
162 (Fedora : popt)
163libpango development libraries
164 (Debian : libpango1.0, libpango1.0-dev)
165 (Fedora : pango, pango-devel)
166libc6 development librairies
167 (Debian : libc6, libc6-dev)
168 (Fedora : glibc, glibc)
169</PRE>
170</ul>
171
172<li>Reminder</li>
173
174<p>
175See the list of compatibilities between LTTng, ltt-control and LTTV at :
176<a
177href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/svn/trunk/lttv/doc/developer/lttng-lttv-compatibility.html">LTTng+LTTV
178versions compatibility</a>.
179
180
181<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttng" name="getlttng">Getting the LTTng packages</a></h3>
182
183<PRE>
184su -
185mkdir /usr/src/lttng
186cd /usr/src/lttng
187(see http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng for package listing)
188wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng/patch-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx.tar.bz2
189bzip2 -cd patch-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx.tar.bz2 | tar xvof -
190</PRE>
191
192
193<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttngsrc" name="getlttngsrc">Getting LTTng kernel sources</a></h3>
194
195<PRE>
196su -
197cd /usr/src
198wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.X.tar.bz2
199bzip2 -cd linux-2.6.X.tar.bz2 | tar xvof -
200cd linux-2.6.X
201- For LTTng 0.9.4- cat /usr/src/lttng/patch*-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx* | patch -p1
202- For LTTng 0.9.5+ apply the patches in the order specified in the series file,
203 or use quilt
204cd ..
205mv linux-2.6.X linux-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
206</PRE>
207
208
209<h3><a href="#TOCinstalllttng" name="installlttng">Installing a LTTng kernel</a></h3>
210
211<PRE>
212su -
213cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
214make menuconfig (or make xconfig or make config)
215 Select the < Help > button if you are not familiar with kernel
216 configuration.
217 Items preceded by [*] means they has to be built into the kernel.
218 Items preceded by [M] means they has to be built as modules.
219 Items preceded by [ ] means they should be removed.
220 go to the "General setup" section
221 Select the following options :
222 [*] Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers
223 [*] Activate markers
224 [*] Activate userspace markers ABI (experimental, optional)
225 [*] Immediate value optimization (optional)
226 [*] Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation (LTTng) --->
227 <M> or <*> Compile lttng tracing probes
228 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit High-speed Lockless Data Relay
229 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Lock-Protected Data Relay
230 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Serializer
231 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Marker Control
232 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Tracer
233 [*] Align Linux Trace Toolkit Traces
234 <M> or <*> Support logging events from userspace
235 [*] Support trace extraction from crash dump
236 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Trace Controller
237 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit State Dump
238 Select <Exit>
239 Select <Exit>
240 Select <Yes>
241make
242make modules_install
243(if necessary, create a initrd with mkinitrd or your preferate alternative)
244(mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx 2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx)
245
246-- on X86, X86_64
247make install
248reboot
249Select the Linux 2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx kernel in your boot loader.
250
251-- on PowerPC
252cp vmlinux.strip /boot/vmlinux-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
253cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
254cp .config /boot/config-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
255depmod -ae -F /boot/System.map-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx 2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
256mkinitrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx 2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx
257(edit /etc/yaboot.conf to add a new entry pointing to your kernel : the entry
258that comes first is the default kernel)
259ybin
260select the right entry at the yaboot prompt (see choices : tab, select : type
261the kernel name followed by enter)
262Select the Linux 2.6.X-lttng-0.x.xx kernel in your boot loader.
263--
264</PRE>
265
266<h3><a href="#TOCeditconfig" name="editconfig">Editing the system wide
267configuration</a></h3>
268
269<p>
270You must activate debugfs and specify a mount point. This is typically done in
271fstab such that it happens at boot time. If you have never used DebugFS before,
272these operation would do this for you :
273
274<PRE>
275mkdir /mnt/debugfs
276cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.lttng.bkp
277echo "debugfs /mnt/debugfs debugfs rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
278</PRE>
279
280<p>
281then, rebooting or issuing the following command will activate debugfs :
282<PRE>
283mount /mnt/debugfs
284</PRE>
285
286<p>
287You need to load the LTT modules to be able to control tracing from user
288space. This is done by issuing the following commands. Note however
289these commands load all LTT modules. Depending on what options you chose to
290compile statically, you may not need to issue all these commands.
291
292<PRE>
293modprobe ltt-trace-control
294modprobe ltt-marker-control
295modprobe ltt-tracer
296modprobe ltt-serialize
297modprobe ltt-relay
298modprobe ipc-trace
299modprobe kernel-trace
300modprobe mm-trace
301modprobe net-trace
302modprobe fs-trace
303modprobe jbd2-trace
304modprobe ext4-trace
305modprobe syscall-trace
306modprobe trap-trace
307#if locking tracing is wanted, uncomment the following
308#modprobe lockdep-trace
309</PRE>
310
311<p>
312If you want to have complete information about the kernel state (including all
313the process names), you need to load the ltt-statedump module. This is done by
314issuing the command :
315
316<PRE>
317modprobe ltt-statedump
318</PRE>
319<p>
320You can automate at boot time loading the ltt-control module by :
321
322<PRE>
323cp /etc/modules /etc/modules.bkp
324echo ltt-trace-control >> /etc/modules
325echo ltt-marker-control >> /etc/modules
326echo ltt-tracer >> /etc/modules
327echo ltt-serialize >> /etc/modules
328echo ltt-relay >> /etc/modules
329echo ipc-trace >> /etc/modules
330echo kernel-trace >> /etc/modules
331echo mm-trace >> /etc/modules
332echo net-trace >> /etc/modules
333echo fs-trace >> /etc/modules
334echo jbd2-trace >> /etc/modules
335echo ext4-trace >> /etc/modules
336echo syscall-trace >> /etc/modules
337echo trap-trace >> /etc/modules
338#if locking tracing is wanted, uncomment the following
339#echo lockdep-trace >> /etc/modules
340</PRE>
341
342
343<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttctl" name="getlttctl">Getting and installing the
344ltt-control package (on the traced machine)</a></h3>
345<p>
346(note : the ltt-control package contains lttd and lttctl. Although it has the
347same name as the ltt-control kernel module, they are *not* the same thing.)
348
349<PRE>
350su -
351cd /usr/src
352wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng/ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2006.tar.gz
353gzip -cd ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2008.tar.gz | tar xvof -
354cd ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2006
355(refer to README to see the development libraries that must be installed on you
356system)
357./configure
358make
359make install
360</PRE>
361
362<h3><a href="#TOCuserspacetracing" name="userspacetracing">Userspace tracing</a></h3>
363
364<PRE>
365Make sure you selected the kernel menuconfig option :
366 <M> or <*> Support logging events from userspace
367And that the ltt-userspace-event kernel module is loaded if selected as a
368module.
369
370Simple userspace tracing is available through
371echo "some text to record" > /mnt/debugfs/ltt/write_event
372
373It will appear in the trace under event :
374channel : userspace
375event name : event
376</PRE>
377
378<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttv" name="getlttv">Getting and installing the LTTV package
379(on the visualisation machine, same
380or different from the visualisation machine)</a></h3>
381
382<PRE>
383su -
384cd /usr/src
385wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/lttv-0.x.xx-xxxx2008.tar.gz
386gzip -cd lttv-0.x.xx-xxxx2008.tar.gz | tar xvof -
387cd lttv-0.x.xx-xxxx2008
388(refer to README to see the development libraries that must be installed on your
389system)
390./configure
391make
392make install
393</PRE>
394
395<hr />
396
397
398<h2><a href="#TOCsection2" name="section2">Using LTTng and LTTV</a></h2>
399
400<li><b>IMPORTANT : Arm Linux Kernel Markers after each boot before tracing</b></li>
401<PRE>
402ltt-armall
403</PRE>
404
405<h3><a href="#TOCuselttvgui" name="uselttvgui">Use graphical LTTV to control
406tracing and analyse traces</a></h3>
407<PRE>
408lttv-gui (or /usr/local/bin/lttv-gui)
409 - Spot the "Tracing Control" icon : click on it
410 (it's a traffic light icon)
411 - enter the root password
412 - click "start"
413 - click "stop"
414 - Yes
415 * You should now see a trace
416</PRE>
417
418<h3><a href="#TOCuselttngtext" name="uselttngtext">Use text mode LTTng to control tracing</a></h3>
419<PRE>
420The tracing can be controlled from a terminal by using the lttctl command (as
421root).
422
423Start tracing :
424
425lttctl -C -w /tmp/trace1 trace1
426
427Stop tracing and destroy trace channels :
428
429lttctl -D trace1
430
431see lttctl --help for details.
432</PRE>
433<p>
434(note : to see if the buffers has been filled, look at the dmesg output after
435lttctl -D or after stopping tracing from the GUI, it will show an event lost
436count. If it is the case, try using larger buffers. See lttctl --help to learn
437how. lttv now also shows event lost messages in the console when loading a trace
438with missing events or lost subbuffers.)
439
440<h3><a href="#TOCuselttvtext" name="uselttvtext">Use text mode LTTV</a></h3>
441<p>
442Feel free to look in /usr/local/lib/lttv/plugins to see all the text and
443graphical plugins available.
444<p>
445For example, a simple trace dump in text format is available with :
446<PRE>
447lttv -m textDump -t /tmp/trace
448</PRE>
449<p>
450See lttv -m textDump --help for detailed command line options of textDump.
451<p>
452It is, in the current state of the project, very useful to use "grep" on the
453text output to filter by specific event fields. You can later copy the timestamp
454of the events to the clipboard and paste them in the GUI by clicking on the
455bottom right label "Current time". Support for this type of filtering should
456be added to the filter module soon.
457
458<h3><a href="#TOChybrid" name="hybrid">Tracing in "Hybrid" mode</a></h3>
459<p>
460Starting from LTTng 0.5.105 and ltt-control 0.20, a new mode can be used :
461hybrid. It can be especially useful when studying big workloads on a long period
462of time.
463<p>
464When using this mode, the most important, low rate control information will be
465recorded during all the trace by lttd (i.e. process creation/exit). The high
466rate information (i.e. interrupt/traps/syscall entry/exit) will be kept in a
467flight recorder buffer (now named flight-channelname_X).
468<p>
469The following lttctl commands take an hybrid trace :
470<p>
471Create trace channel, start lttd on normal channels, start tracing:
472<PRE>
473lttctl -C -w /tmp/trace2 -o channel.kernel.overwrite=1 trace2
474</PRE>
475<p>
476Stop tracing, start lttd on flight recorder channels, destroy trace channels :
477<PRE>
478lttctl -D -w /tmp/trace2 trace2
479</PRE>
480<p>
481Each "overwrite" channel is flight recorder channel.
482
483
484<h3><a href="#TOCflight" name="flight">Tracing in flight recorder mode</a></h3>
485<li>Flight recorder mode</li>
486<p>
487The flight recorder mode writes data into overwritten buffers for all channels,
488including control channels, except for the facilities tracefiles. It consists of
489setting all channels to "overwrite".
490<p>
491The following lttctl commands take a flight recorder trace :
492<PRE>
493lttctl -C -w /tmp/trace3 -o channel.all.overwrite=1 trace3
494...
495lttctl -D -w /tmp/trace3 trace3
496</PRE>
497
498<hr />
499
500
501<h2><a href="#TOCsection3" name="section3">Adding new instrumentations with the
502markers</a></h2>
503<p>
504
505<h3><a href="#TOCkerneltp" name="kerneltp">Adding kernel
506instrumentation</a></h3>
507
508<p>
509See <a
510href="http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/compudj/linux-2.6-lttng.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/markers.txt">Documentation/markers.txt</a>
511and <a
512href="http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/compudj/linux-2.6-lttng.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/tracepoints.txt">Documentation/tracepoints.txt</a> in your kernel
513tree.
514<p>
515Also see <a
516href="http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/compudj/linux-2.6-lttng.git;a=tree;f=ltt/probes">ltt/probes/</a>
517for LTTng probe examples.
518
519<h3><a href="#TOCusertp" name="usertp">Adding userspace instrumentation</a></h3>
520
521Add new events to userspace programs with
522<a href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/">userspace markers packages</a>.
523Get the latest markers-userspace-*.tar.bz2 and see the Makefile and examples. It
524allows inserting markers in executables and libraries, currently only on x86_32
525and x86_64.
526See <a
527href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2">markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2</a> or more recent.
528
529<p>
530Note that a new design document for a 3rd generation of tracepoint/marker-based
531userspace tracing is available at <a
532href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/svn/trunk/lttv/doc/developer/ust.html">LTTng User-space Tracing
533Design</a>. This new infrastructure is not yet implemented.
534
535<p>
536The easy quick-and-dirty way to perform userspace tracing is currently to write
537an string to /mnt/debugfs/ltt/write_event. See <a
538href="#userspacetracing">Userspace tracing</a> in the
539installation for sources section of this document.
540
541<hr />
542
543<h2><a href="#TOCsection4" name="section4">Creating Debian or RPM packages</a></h2>
544<p>
545
546<h3><a href="#TOCpkgdebian" name="pkgdebian">Create custom LTTV Debian packages</a></h3>
547
548<PRE>
549Use : dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
550</PRE>
551<p>
552You should then have your LTTV .deb files created for your architecture.
553
554<h3><a href="#TOCpkglttng" name="pkglttng">Create custom LTTng packages</a></h3>
555<p>
556For building LTTng Debian packages :
557get the build tree with patches applies as explained in section 2.
558
559<PRE>
560make menuconfig (or xconfig or config) (customize your configuration)
561make-kpkg kernel_image
562</PRE>
563<p>
564You will then see your freshly created .deb in /usr/src. Install it with
565<PRE>
566dpkg -i /usr/src/(image-name).deb
567</PRE>
568<p>
569Then, follow the section "Editing the system wide configuration" in section 2.
570
571<hr />
572
573 </body>
574</html>
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