The Linux Kernel Tracepoint API
Jason
Baron
jbaron@redhat.com
William
Cohen
wcohen@redhat.com
This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307 USA
For more details see the file COPYING in the source
distribution of Linux.
Introduction
Tracepoints are static probe points that are located in strategic points
throughout the kernel. 'Probes' register/unregister with tracepoints
via a callback mechanism. The 'probes' are strictly typed functions that
are passed a unique set of parameters defined by each tracepoint.
From this simple callback mechanism, 'probes' can be used to profile, debug,
and understand kernel behavior. There are a number of tools that provide a
framework for using 'probes'. These tools include Systemtap, ftrace, and
LTTng.
Tracepoints are defined in a number of header files via various macros. Thus,
the purpose of this document is to provide a clear accounting of the available
tracepoints. The intention is to understand not only what tracepoints are
available but also to understand where future tracepoints might be added.
The API presented has functions of the form:
trace_tracepointname(function parameters). These are the
tracepoints callbacks that are found throughout the code. Registering and
unregistering probes with these callback sites is covered in the
Documentation/trace/* directory.
IRQ
!Iinclude/trace/events/irq.h
SIGNAL
!Iinclude/trace/events/signal.h
Block IO
!Iinclude/trace/events/block.h
Workqueue
!Iinclude/trace/events/workqueue.h