Build Stuff'16 Lithuania

The Linux kernel has multiple "tracers" built-in, with various degrees of support for aggregation, dynamic probes, parameter processing, filtering, histograms, and other features. Starting from the venerable ftrace, introduced in kernel 2.6, all the way through eBPF, which is still under development, there are many options to choose from when you need to statically instrument your software with probes, or diagnose issues in the field using the system's dynamic probes. Modern tools include SystemTap, SysDig, ktap, perf, bcc, and others. In this talk, we will begin by reviewing the modern tracing landscape -- ftrace, perf_events, kprobes, uprobes, eBPF -- and what insight into system activity these tools can offer. Then, we will look at specific examples of using tracing tools for diagnostics: tracing a memory leak using low-overhead kmalloc/kfree instrumentation, diagnosing a CPU caching issue using perf stat, probing network and block I/O latency distributions under load, or merely snooping user activities by capturing terminal input and output.