[UPDATE] Linux Kernel Event Trace tool(LKET)

[Li Guanglei <guanglei at cn dot ibm dot com>]

Hi folks,

  This is the updated version of LKET. Compared with the previous
version, it includes the following enhancements:
  1. more event hooks
  2. binary tracing for better performance
  3. other performance enhancements & bugfixes
  4. more backtrace support
  5. a b2a converter to merge per-cpu files and convert binary format
into ASCII format

  Currently LKET is actually a collection of SystemTap tapsets which
are used to trace various events inside the kernel and generate the
tracing data. This tool aims to provide an easy way to trace various
events inside the kernel for the purpose of performance analysis.

  Since LKET is an extension to the tapsets library available on
SystemTap, I hope LKET could go into SystemTap's tapsets library. So
it will make SystemTap more easier to use even for those who don't
know much about Linux Kernel internal, and thus benefit more people.
Any comments about this proposal?

 Here's the events being implemented by now:

 System Call:
    entry of syscall
    return of syscall
 Process Creation:
    fork
    execve
 IO Scheduler:
    a request is retrieved from request queue
    a request is added to the request queue
    a request is completed
 Task Dispatching(scheduler):
    context switch
    cpu goes idle
 Scsi Activities
    mid-layer prepared a IO request
    Dispatch a command to the LLD
    I/O is done by LLD
    mid-layer processes the completed IO
 Pagefault
    a pagefault is taking place
 Networking Device
    network device receives a packet
    a packet will be sent out by network device

 During the LKET work, we also did some testing for overhead &
accuracy. I planned to disclose the overhead testing result of LKET in
the next couple of days.

 I attached the tgz package of LKET since the # of files is a little big.

 Suggestions, Comments, Flames are welcome. And thanks in advance
for your help.

Attachment: LKET-2006-05-11.tgz
Description: application/compressed