Re: [PATCH 2/4] tracing: add event trace infrastructure

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed Feb 25 2009 - 03:42:21 EST



* Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> But we don't do that, because userspace is hard, because we
> don't have a delivery process. But nobody has even tried!
> [...]

Actually, you can do it right now, with the current model:

echo raw > /debug/tracing/trace_options
echo bin > /debug/tracing/trace_options

Reality is that rarely does anyone use it because obviously
self-sufficient kernel instrumentation is very convenient to
kernel developers, to testers and to bugreporters alike.
(Processing kernel details in user-space is also often slower
and duplicates code that the kernel already has like symbol
lookups.)

_Maybe_ some of it (but certainly not all) could be done via
klibc - but that got nacked. If you can convince Linus to take
klibc and to allow a userspace 'halo' of utilities that are
intimate with kernel details into the kernel proper then maybe
we could start providing such tools in the kernel proper.

Ingo
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