Linux Kernel Debugging Tools Monthly Meeting on Wednesday, May 24th

Hello everyone!

After two months off, the next Linux Kernel Debugging Tools monthly meeting is tomorrow: Wednesday, May 24th at 11:30am Pacific time. The agenda is a bit light so far: please feel free to reply to this message with suggested topics.

The virtual meeting link is changed from the calendar invite, since Omar is still on leave. Please email me off-list if you'd like to join. If you're on the calendar invite, you should have received a separate email from me containing the link.

* Linux Plumber's Conference is November 13th-15th, and there is a proposed microconference for Linux Kernel Debugging Tools [1]. There is a lot of exciting work going on in our area, so please do submit to speak there.

* [ Your topic here? ]

* If there's no other topics, I can give a brief update / shameless plug of the current DWARFless debugging [2] branch of Drgn. True to its name, it allows you to run Drgn without DWARF debuginfo (instead using kallsyms and CTF).

As you can see, not too much on the agenda, but I always find that these meetings stir up interesting discussion that wasn't planned, so I'd encourage you to show up anyway. Worst case, we chat for a bit and leave early for lunch!

Thanks,
Stephen

[1]: https://lpc.events/event/17/page/200-proposed-microconferences#debugging
[2]: https://github.com/osandov/drgn/issues/176

Hello all,

We had a small catch-up meeting with three participants. There weren't any major action items or pressing topics to discuss, but here are some notes:

* As mentioned, LPC is coming up. Remote attendance is an option too. I'm not sure whether the MC is accepted or just "proposed" - it's possible that talk submissions will be folded into Toolchains if we don't have enough to fill a full track for a day.

* Philip mentioned some open questions he's been thinking about: Rust support for Linux debugging tools, especially crash (and Drgn will need to think about this as well).

* Jay mentioned that the C++ support work for Drgn has laid a lot of groundwork that should hopefully make this easier, specifically with a few DWARF tags which weren't implemented.

* As a novice with DWARF, I asked about resources for learning more about it. Jay mentioned that the DWARF spec is the best resource, but doesn't recommend it for learning -- he suggested playing with "dwarfdump" on a simple program to get my feet wet.

* I shared a demo of Drgn running on a live kernel with CTF data, and no DWARF info. As of now, CTF debuginfo is not a feature in the upstream build system, so I'm demonstrating Oracle UEK, which carries CTF as a distribution patch.

* Relating back to Rust for Linux, it will be interesting to see how CTF can adjust to the Rust type system. Similarly, BTF will have to start considering this as well.

Thanks for the folks who showed up! It was good to see everyone, and I'll be looking forward to the June meeting, when we should be back to normal with Omar hosting.

Thanks,
Stephen