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perf/sdt: SDT events listing/probing

Hemant Kumar lkml 4 versions – In review

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  1. v4 Latest5 patches 41 repliesIn review
  2. v35 patches 14 repliesSuperseded
  3. v25 patches 11 repliesSuperseded
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v15 patches4 repliesSuperseded

Patches in v4 No applies recorded yet

#Subject and filesSizeRepliesApplied
1/5perf/sdt: ELF support for SDTtools/perf/util/symbol-elf.c tools/perf/util/symbol.h+273 -00 replies
2/5perf/sdt: Add SDT events into a cachetools/perf/Documentation/perf-sdt-cache.txt tools/perf/Makefile.perf tools/perf/builtin-sdt-cache.c +5 more+710 -00 replies
3/5perf/sdt: Show SDT cache contentstools/perf/Documentation/perf-sdt-cache.txt tools/perf/builtin-sdt-cache.c tools/perf/util/parse-events.h +1 more+82 -20 replies
4/5perf/sdt: Delete SDT events from cachetools/perf/Documentation/perf-sdt-cache.txt tools/perf/builtin-sdt-cache.c tools/perf/util/parse-events.h +1 more+67 -20 replies
5/5perf/sdt: Add support to perf record to trace SDT eventstools/perf/builtin-probe.c tools/perf/builtin-record.c tools/perf/util/parse-events.c +6 more+329 -1943 replies

Reviews trailers per patch

1 of 5 patches has a Reviewed-by or Acked-by.

PatchNamhyung KimPeter Zijlstra
1/5A-b
2/5
3/5
4/5
5/5Requested-by

Trailers given in replies are filled; those carried in the patches from earlier versions are outlined with dashes.

Read the v4 thread

Cover letter [PATCH v4 0/5] perf/sdt: SDT events listing/probing

This patchset helps in listing dtrace style markers(SDT) present in user space applications through perf.
Notes/markers are placed at important places by the
developers. They have a negligible overhead when not enabled.
We can enable them and probe at these places and find some important information like the arguments' values, etc.

We have lots of applications which use SDT markers today, like:
Postgresql, MySql, Mozilla, Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, libvirt, QEMU, glib

To add SDT markers into user applications:
We need to have this header sys/sdt.h present.
sys/sdt.h used is version 3.
If not present, install systemtap-sdt-devel package (for fedora-20).

With this patchset,
- Use perf sdt-cache --add to add SDT events to a cache.

# perf sdt-cache --add ./user_app
    4 SDT events added for /home/user/user_app!

- Use perf sdt-cache --del to remove SDT events from the cache>

# perf sdt-cache --del ./user_app
    4 events removed for /home/user/user_app!

- Dump the cache onto stdout using perf sdt-cache --dump:

# perf sdt-cache --dump
/home/user/user_app :
    %user_app:foo_start
    %user_app:fun_start

- To probe and trace an SDT event :

# perf record -e %user_app:foo_start -aR sleep 10

The support for perf to sdt events has undergone a lot of changes since it was introduced. After a lot of discussions (https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/7/20/284), the patchset is subdivided for ease of review.
Previously, a patchset supporting "perf list sdt" was posted, but it didn't make much sense since, only listing SDT events for an ELF won't help. This patchset aims at adding a sub-command "sdt-cache" to perf to manage a cache for management of the SDT events.

This link shows an example of marker probing with Systemtap:
https://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/AddingUserSpaceProbingToApps

This link provides important info regarding SDT notes:
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/UserSpaceProbeImplementation

- Markers in binaries :
These SDT markers are present in the ELF in the section named ".note.stapsdt".
Here, the name of the marker, its provider, type, location, base address, semaphore address.
We can retrieve these values using the members name_off and desc_off in Nhdr structure. If these are not enabled, they are present in the ELF as nop.

Changes since last series:
- Changed to use the new --quiet option added by Masami to silently add/delete SDT events for "perf record".
- Now, the options are used with 'PARSE_OPT_EXCLUSIVE' added by Namhyung Kim.
- Addressed the other review comments made by Masami and Namhyung.
- Fixed some bugs.

TODO:
- Add support to add most of the SDT events on a system to the cache.
- Recognizing arguments and support to probe on them.

---

Hemant Kumar (5):
perf/sdt: ELF support for SDT
perf/sdt: Add SDT events into a cache perf/sdt: Show SDT cache contents
perf/sdt: Delete SDT events from cache perf/sdt: Add support to perf record to trace SDT events

 tools/perf/Documentation/perf-sdt-cache.txt |   36 +
 tools/perf/Makefile.perf                    |    4 
 tools/perf/builtin-probe.c                  |    5 
 tools/perf/builtin-record.c                 |   23 +
 tools/perf/builtin-sdt-cache.c              |  104 +++
 tools/perf/builtin.h                        |    1 
 tools/perf/command-list.txt                 |    1 
 tools/perf/perf.c                           |    1 
 tools/perf/util/parse-events.c              |    6 
 tools/perf/util/parse-events.h              |    7 
 tools/perf/util/probe-event.c               |   85 ++-
 tools/perf/util/probe-event.h               |    8 
 tools/perf/util/probe-finder.c              |    3 
 tools/perf/util/sdt.c                       |  899 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 tools/perf/util/symbol-elf.c                |  252 ++++++++
 tools/perf/util/symbol.h                    |   23 +
 16 files changed, 1448 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 tools/perf/Documentation/perf-sdt-cache.txt
 create mode 100644 tools/perf/builtin-sdt-cache.c
 create mode 100644 tools/perf/util/sdt.c