A generic tracing API for Linux

Many userspace developers want a "flight recorder" for applications on Linux. While Solaris offers a comprehensive tracing tool, dtrace, Linux is now growing pieces of tracing functionality.

By Jonathan Corbet, LinuxWorld.com, 09/27/07

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Dynamic kernel tracing remains high on the wishlists presented by many Linux users. While much work has been done to create a powerful tracing capability, very little of that work has found its way into the mainline. The recent posting of one small piece of infrastructure may help to change that situation, though.

The piece in question is the trace layer posted by David Wilder. Its purpose is to make it easy for a tracing application to get things set up in the kernel and allow the user to control the tracing process. To that end, it provides an internal kernel API and a set of control files in the debugfs filesystem.

On the kernel side, a tracing module would set things up with a call to:

 

    #include <linux/trace.h>

    struct trace_info *trace_setup(const char *root, const char *name,
                       u32 buf_size, u32 buf_nr, u32 flags);

Here, root is the name of the root directory which will appear in debugfs, name is the name of the control directory within root, buf_size and buf_nr describe the size and number of relay buffers to be created, and flags controls various channel options. The TRACE_GLOBAL_CHANNEL flag says that a single set of relay channels (as opposed to per-CPU channels) should be used; TRACE_FLIGHT_CHANNEL turns on the "flight recorder" mode where relay buffer overruns result in the overwriting of old data, and TRACE_DISABLE_STATE disables control of the channel via debugfs.

The return value (if all goes well) will be a pointer to a trace_info structure for the channel. This structure has a number of fields, but the one which will be of most interest outside of the trace code itself will be rchan, which is a pointer to the relay channel associated with this trace point.

When actual tracing is to begin, the kernel module should make a call to:

 

    int trace_start(struct trace_info *trace);

The return value follows the "zero or a negative error value" convention. Tracing is turned off with:

 

    int trace_stop(struct trace_info *trace);

When the tracing module is done, it should shut down the trace with:

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