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<head>
- <title>Linux Trace Toolkit Quickstart</title>
+ <title>Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation User Documentation</title>
</head>
<body>
-<h1>Linux Trace Toolkit Quickstart</h1>
+<h1>Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation User Documentation</h1>
Author : Mathieu Desnoyers, September 2005<br>
Last update : January 21st, 2009<br>
+(originally known as the LTTng QUICKSTART guide)
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#intro" name="TOCintro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#section1" name="TOCsection1">Installing LTTng and LTTV from
sources</a></li>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#prerequisites" name="TOCprerequisites">Prerequisistes</li>
+<li><a href="#getlttng" name="TOCgetlttng">Getting the LTTng packages</li>
+<li><a href="#getlttngsrc" name="TOCgetlttngsrc">Getting the LTTng kernel sources</li>
+<li><a href="#installlttng" name="TOCinstalllttng">Installing a LTTng kernel</li>
+<li><a href="#editconfig" name="TOCeditconfig">Editing the system wide
+configuration</a>
+<li><a href="#getlttctl" name="TOCgetlttctl">Getting and installing the
+ltt-control package</li>
+<li><a href="#userspacetracing" name="TOCuserspacetracing">Userspace Tracing</li>
+<li><a href="#getlttv" name="TOCgetlttv">Getting and installing the LTTV package</ul>
<li><a href="#section2" name="TOCsection2">Using LTTng and LTTV</a></li>
<li><a href="#section3" name="TOCsection3">Adding kernel and user-space
-tracepoints</a></li>
+instrumentation</a>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#kerneltp" name="TOCkerneltp">Adding kernel instrumentation</a></li>
+<li><a href="#usertp" name="TOCusertp">Adding userspace instrumentation</a></li>
+</ul>
<li><a href="#section4" name="TOCsection4">Creating Debian and RPM packages
-from LTTV</a>
+from LTTV</a></li>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#pkgdebian" name="TOCpkgdebian">Create custom LTTV Debian
+<li><a href="#pkglttng" name="TOCpkglttng">Create custom LTTng packages</a></li>
+
+</ul>
</ul>
briefly how to add a new trace point to the kernel and to user space
applications. The fourth and last part explains how to create Debian or RPM
packages from the LTTng and LTTV sources.
-
<p>
These operations are made for installing the LTTng 0.86 tracer on a linux 2.6.X
kernel. You will also find instructions for installation of LTTV 0.12.x : the
<br>
<br>
Supported architectures :
-<br>
+br>
LTTng :<br>
<li> x86 32/64 bits
<li> PowerPC 32 and 64 bits
<hr />
-<h2><a href="#TOCsection2" name="section2">Installation from sources</a></h2>
+<h2><a href="#TOCsection1" name="section1">Installation from sources</a></h2>
<p>
-<li>Prerequisites</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCprerequisites" name="prerequisites">Prerequisites</a></h3>
<ul>
<p>
Tools needed to follow the package download steps :
versions compatibility</a>.
-<li>Getting the LTTng packages</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttng" name="getlttng">Getting the LTTng packages</a></h3>
<PRE>
su -
</PRE>
-<li>Getting LTTng kernel sources</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttngsrc" name="getlttngsrc">Getting LTTng kernel sources</a></h3>
<PRE>
su -
</PRE>
-<li>Installing a LTTng kernel</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCinstalllttng" name="installlttng">Installing a LTTng kernel</a></h3>
<PRE>
su -
--
</PRE>
-<li>Editing the system wide configuration</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCeditconfig" name="editconfig">Editing the system wide
+configuration</a></h3>
<p>
You must activate debugfs and specify a mount point. This is typically done in
#echo lockdep-trace >> /etc/modules
</PRE>
-<li>Getting and installing the ltt-control package (on the traced machine)</li>
+
+<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttctl" name="getlttctl">Getting and installing the
+ltt-control package (on the traced machine)</a></h3>
<p>
(note : the ltt-control package contains lttd and lttctl. Although it has the
same name as the ltt-control kernel module, they are *not* the same thing.)
make install
</PRE>
-<li>Userspace tracing</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCuserspacetracing" name="userspacetracing">Userspace tracing</a></h3>
<PRE>
Make sure you selected the kernel menuconfig option :
event name : event
</PRE>
-<li>Getting and installing the LTTV package (on the visualisation machine, same
-or different from the visualisation machine)</li>
+<h3><a href="#TOCgetlttv" name="getlttv">Getting and installing the LTTV package
+(on the visualisation machine, same
+or different from the visualisation machine)</a></h3>
<PRE>
su -
./configure
make
make install
-
-
-<li>Getting and installing the markers-userspace package for user space
-tracing (experimental)</li>
-
-See <a
-href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2">markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2</a> or more recent.
+</PRE>
<hr />
-<h2><a href="#TOCsection3" name="section3">Using LTTng and LTTV</a></h2>
+<h2><a href="#TOCsection2" name="section2">Using LTTng and LTTV</a></h2>
<li>IMPORTANT : Arm Linux Kernel Markers after each boot</li>
-
<PRE>
ltt-armall
</PRE>
<li>Use graphical LTTV to control tracing and analyse traces</li>
-
<PRE>
lttv-gui (or /usr/local/bin/lttv-gui)
- Spot the "Tracing Control" icon : click on it
</PRE>
<li>Use text mode LTTng to control tracing</li>
-
<PRE>
The tracing can be controlled from a terminal by using the lttctl command (as
root).
lttctl -D trace1
see lttctl --help for details.
-<PRE>
-
+</PRE>
<p>
(note : to see if the buffers has been filled, look at the dmesg output after
lttctl -R or after stopping tracing from the GUI, it will show an event lost
graphical plugins available.
<p>
For example, a simple trace dump in text format is available with :
-
<PRE>
lttv -m textDump -t /tmp/trace
</PRE>
-
<p>
See lttv -m textDump --help for detailed command line options of textDump.
-
<p>
It is, in the current state of the project, very useful to use "grep" on the
text output to filter by specific event fields. You can later copy the timestamp
be added to the filter module soon.
<li>Hybrid mode</li>
-
<p>
Starting from LTTng 0.5.105 and ltt-control 0.20, a new mode can be used :
hybrid. It can be especially useful when studying big workloads on a long period
of time.
-
<p>
When using this mode, the most important, low rate control information will be
recorded during all the trace by lttd (i.e. process creation/exit). The high
rate information (i.e. interrupt/traps/syscall entry/exit) will be kept in a
flight recorder buffer (now named flight-channelname_X).
-
<p>
The following lttctl commands take an hybrid trace :
<p>
Each "overwrite" channel is flight recorder channel.
<li>Flight recorder mode</li>
-
<p>
The flight recorder mode writes data into overwritten buffers for all channels,
including control channels, except for the facilities tracefiles. It consists of
setting all channels to "overwrite".
-
<p>
The following lttctl commands take a flight recorder trace :
-
<PRE>
lttctl -C -w /tmp/trace3 -o channel.all.overwrite=1 trace3
...
lttctl -D -w /tmp/trace3 trace3
</PRE>
-**************************************************************
-** Section 4 * Adding new instrumentations with the markers **
-**************************************************************
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a href="#TOCsection3" name="section3">Adding new instrumentations with the
+markers</a></h2>
+<p>
+
+<h3><a href="#TOCkerneltp" name="kerneltp">Adding kernel
+instrumentation</a></h3>
-See Documentation/markers.txt and Documentation/tracepoints.txt in your kernel
+<p>
+See <a
+href="http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/compudj/linux-2.6-lttng.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/markers.txt">Documentation/markers.txt</a>
+and <a
+href="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
tree.
+<p>
+Also see <a
+href="http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/compudj/linux-2.6-lttng.git;a=tree;f=ltt/probes">ltt/probes/</a>
+for LTTng probe examples.
-* Add new events to userspace programs with userspace markers
-http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/
+<h3><a href="#TOCusertp" name="usertp">Adding userspace instrumentation</a></h3>
+Add new events to userspace programs with
+<a href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/">userspace markers packages</a>.
Get the latest markers-userspace-*.tar.bz2 and see the Makefile and examples. It
allows inserting markers in executables and libraries, currently only on x86_32
and x86_64.
+See <a
+href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2">markers-userspace-0.5.tar.bz2</a> or more recent.
-***********************************************************
-** Section 5 * Creating Debian or RPM packages **
-***********************************************************
+<p>
+Note that a new design document for a 3rd generation of tracepoint/marker-based
+userspace tracing is available at <a
+href="http://ltt.polymtl.ca/svn/trunk/lttv/doc/developer/ust.html">LTTng User-space Tracing
+Design</a>. This new infrastructure is not yet implemented.
-* Create custom LTTV Debian packages
+<p>
+The easy quick-and-dirty way to perform userspace tracing is currently to write
+an string to /mnt/debugfs/ltt/write_event. See <a
+href="#userspacetracing">Userspace tracing</a> in the
+installation for sources section of this document.
-Use : dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
+<hr />
-You should then have your LTTV .deb files created for your architecture.
+<h2><a href="#TOCsection4" name="section4">Creating Debian or RPM packages</a></h2>
+<p>
-* Create custom LTTng packages
+<h3><a href="#TOCpkgdebian" name="pkgdebian">Create custom LTTV Debian packages</a></h3>
-For building LTTng Debian packages :
+<PRE>
+Use : dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
+</PRE>
+<p>
+You should then have your LTTV .deb files created for your architecture.
-Get the build tree with patches applies as explained in section 2.
+<h3><a href="#TOCpkglttng" name="pkglttng">Create custom LTTng packages</a></h3>
+<p>
+For building LTTng Debian packages :
+get the build tree with patches applies as explained in section 2.
+<PRE>
make menuconfig (or xconfig or config) (customize your configuration)
make-kpkg kernel_image
-
+</PRE>
+<p>
You will then see your freshly created .deb in /usr/src. Install it with
+<PRE>
dpkg -i /usr/src/(image-name).deb
-
+</PRE>
+<p>
Then, follow the section "Editing the system wide configuration" in section 2.