Description
This lecture introduces Systemtap, a free software (GPL)
infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information
about the running Linux system.
The lecture's first part points out in which situations
administrators and developers are often lacking information
when diagnosing performance or functional problems.
A short overview about the Linux Kernel is given, enabling
the listener to get a feeling, which information is
accessible and might be interesting in his specific
use-case.
Next, a brief overview of Systemtap's inner workings is
given.
Therefore, common probing techniques, their prerequisites,
possible risks and downsides are presented. This part ends
by showing how these techniques are accessible in Systemtap
and what is needed to get them to run.
The lecture's last part introduces Systemtap's scripting
language. It explains a couple of commonly used scripts and
shows how the listener can practically introduce them to his
own logging and monitoring environment.
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