Michael Dolan Dot Com

10 Responses to “SystemTap for Linux - Awesome!”

1. December 10th, 2005 at 3:17 pm

   jamesd said:
   

   Aproaching maturity, that is a laugh. Is that the reason, that I have created 7 simple scripts that crash the box they are run on? Yes I have filed a bug report for each one. BTW I haven’t even bothered with anything more complex knowing that it simply isn’t ready.

   if you want a real solution with the power of systemtap use Solaris 10 with dtrace. It is mature. And ready for use and free. for more information on systemtap, dtrace and solaris check out my blog

   uadmin.blogspot.com

2. December 11th, 2005 at 8:21 pm

   Administrator said:
   

   It’s currently a tech preview in RHEL update 2 - DTrace took Sun like 3-5 years to bring to market; a few bugs never hurt a maturing app. Further, DTrace requires recoding applications to dig deeper and SystemTap won’t have that requirement. Had Sun released it under GPL, then yes maybe we could fix DTrace’s issues. Both take different approaches to the same issue; I like the Linux direction and I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

3. December 15th, 2005 at 4:10 am

   jamesd said:
   

   Hi

   “a few bugs never hurt a maturing app.” wow, nice world to live in. People want to use dtrace and maybe some day systemtap in a production environment to find bugs that only appear when the application and is underload. Do you think american express will ever use systemtap if it crashes the system at the cost of 10’s of thousands of dollars per second? Would you mind a few bugs in your filesystem code, sure it only effects one out of 10^9 bytes, sounds safe? well that is 500 errors on your new 500GB drive?

   Better look again. “Further, DTrace requires recoding applications to dig deeper and SystemTap won�€™t have that requirement.” I would assume you agree that the GPL version of top has not been recoded?

4. December 15th, 2005 at 12:55 pm

   Administrator said:
   

   �€œa few bugs never hurt a maturing app.�€� –> I was referencing the fact that SystemTap is not a production ready technology yet - bugs are good when you’re testing a pre-production app.

   Top has nothing to do with recoding applications. SystemTap will provide a deeper view into what’s happening than DTrace will because DTrace requires that you add trace points into your application’s code. So, should American Express go and ask its ISVs to add trace points to their code? With SystemTap they won’t have to.

   My post simply pointed out a cool new Linux technology that is coming out. This has nothing to do with Solaris or DTrace.

   BTW; I allow just about any comments pro/con here but take liberty to edit out link spamming.

5. December 15th, 2005 at 1:25 pm

   jamesd said:
   

   Not sure what you mean by link spamming, all links I submitted in my previous comment, were valid and directly on topic, and were not even to sites I control.

   DTrace doesn’t require any changes or that the be recompiled. It places probes on running application. With ZERO changes to application being probed. It doesn’t even require the application to be restarted.

   You can add probes to the source, code that gives you higher level constructs. Such as adding static probes to php or java that allow dtrace to understand language. But is not necessary.

   I explained this in my previous comments that showed dtrace being used on applications that the users didn’t have the source or even debug information included. If you don’t have source code or debugging information how do you change the application?

6. December 15th, 2005 at 1:55 pm

   Administrator said:
   

   “You can add probes to the source, code that gives you higher level constructs. Such as adding static probes to php or java that allow dtrace to understand language. But is not necessary.”

   But that would help you understand what’s going on in your application wouldn’t it? SystemTap gets around having to recode anything in the app. Two different approaches and each valid depending on your POV.

   I respect your opinion, however, this post was never about DTrace. If you posted a comment on a new feature in OpenOffice, would you expect others to send in a list of links explaining why MS Office is better? If you don’t like SystemTap, don’t use it; that simple.

7. December 15th, 2005 at 2:10 pm

   movement said:
   

   Michael, you’re still confused. DTrace *just like SystemTap* does NOT require you to alter your application at all, ever. (Although userland tracing doesn’t even exist in SystemTap yet). Please go read up a bit more carefully about DTrace before spreading misinformation.

   The USDT feature of DTrace is an *additional*, *optional* feature that allows you to comprehend application behaviour even more clearly than that provided by the unmodified userland tracing. In particular, in the future, SystemTap will likely grow a similar feature. OK?

8. December 15th, 2005 at 2:17 pm

   Administrator said:
   

   Honestly folks, this was never meant to be a comparison of DTrace and SystemTap. The original post simply pointed to an upcoming Linux feature that looks cool. This site is not the forum for such a debate.

9. December 16th, 2005 at 1:22 am

   ahl said:
   

   [deleted post]

   [admin: ahl0003, I appreciate your concern, however, this post is about SystemTap and will not become a forum for other agendas.]

10. December 16th, 2005 at 10:14 pm

    ahl said:
    

    Sorry if I got off topic. I thought you had made an observation about a specific deficiency that you had encountered in DTrace, and since the discussion had certainly strayed from your initial point I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing your observation. If it’s not appropriate here, feel free to follow up in email.

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