SystemTap

zh-CN:SystemTap SystemTap provides free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information about the running Linux system.

Easy and fast

Officially, it is recommended to build a linux-custom package to run SystemTap, but rebuilding the original linux package can be very easy and efficient.

Prepare

You can run ABSROOT=. abs core/linux; cd core/linux to get the original kernel build files. Then use makepkg --verifysource to get the additional files. By performing the verification, you can safely skip the step of "Update checksum".

modify config

Edit config (for 32-bit systems) or config.x86_64 (for 64-bit systems), turn on these options:

• CONFIG_KPROBES=y
• CONFIG_KPROBES_SANITY_TEST=n
• CONFIG_KPROBE_EVENT=y
• CONFIG_NET_DCCPPROBE=m
• CONFIG_NET_SCTPPROBE=m
• CONFIG_NET_TCPPROBE=y
• CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y
• CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_REDUCED=n
• CONFIG_X86_DECODER_SELFTEST=n

By default only CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO and CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_REDUCED are not set.

With current core/linux (3.6.10) you can simply append these lines into config[.x86_64]:

x86_64

echo '
CONFIG_KPROBES=y
CONFIG_KPROBES_SANITY_TEST=n
CONFIG_KPROBE_EVENT=y
CONFIG_NET_DCCPPROBE=m
CONFIG_NET_SCTPPROBE=m
CONFIG_NET_TCPPROBE=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_REDUCED=n
CONFIG_X86_DECODER_SELFTEST=n
' >> config.x86_64

Update checksum

You can safely skip this step if you believe the source files are correct.

Run md5sum config[.x86_64] to get a new md5sum.

In PKGBUILD file, the md5sums=('sum-of-first' ... 'sum-of-last') has the same order with source=('first-source' ... 'last-source'), put your new md5sum in the right place.

Build and Install

Optional: you can set MAKEFLAGS="-j16" in /etc/makepkg.conf to speed up the compilation.

Run makepkg or makepkg --skipchecksums to compile, then simply sudo pacman -U *.pkg.tar.gz to install the packages. pacman will tell you reinstall, That's great!

linux and linux-headers should be reinstalled, linux-docs does not matter.

Via this method, external modules (e.g. nvidia and virtualbox) don't need to be rebuilt.

SystemTap

Simply install SystemTap from AUR: systemtap^AUR, all done.

However, the SystemTap package in AUR seems to be outdated. You could also try a newer version of PKGBUILD from this site: [1].

Build custom kernel

Please reference this README

Troubleshooting

Pass 4 fails when launching

If you have:

   /usr/share/systemtap/runtime/stat.c:214:2: error: 'cpu_possible_map' undeclared (first use in this function)

Try to install systemtap-git package

System.map is missing

You can recover it where you build your linux kernel with DEBUG_INFO enabled

   cp src/linux-3.6/System.map /boot/System.map-3.6.7-1-ARCH