Re: Status of systemtap in Debian
On 2010-02-16, Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:
> Systemtap[1] is a tool allowing to dynamically insert probes in the
> Linux kernel, similarly to what is possible with DTrace on Solaris.
> [1] http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
>
> The state of systemtap in Debian is currently worrying. First, the
> package has been orphaned (#568866). I'm willing to take over
> maintenance, but there's another, bigger problem: the Debian kernels
> don't provide debuginfo, so they are unsuitable for use with systemtap.
> Users are required to build a custom kernel.
> This has been discussed at length in #365349, and the blockers are:
>
> - disk space on buildds: at least 2 GiB are required to build a kernel
> with debuginfo. (that doesn't sound too hard to satisfy)
>
> - mirror space: each debug .deb would use ~ 450 MB (see
> http://ddebs.ubuntu.com/pool/main/l/linux/)
>
> Debian is currently the only major distro where users are required to
> build their own kernel to use systemtap, so I think that we should try
> to support it, at least for some kernel flavors and some
> architectures.
>
> Kernel, buildd and mirror people, what do you think?
Is that supported on all architectures or is it architecture-specific?
Would it be sufficient to provide that infrastructure on the fast
arches? I'm concerned how much it increases the build process on our
slow architectures, especially considering that you need to write a lot
more to disk than it used to and I/O is not that fast.
I guess we can arrange it for i386, amd64, powerpc, s390 and ia64 buildd-
wise.
Kind regards
Philipp Kern
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