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23 September 2009, 16:16

Version 1.0 of SystemTap test and debugging tool released

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The SystemTap developers have released version 1.0 of their tracing and debugging framework. Major new additions include experimental access for non-privileged users, dramatically reduced memory requirements and a range of new probes in the networking area.

SystemTap allows a detailed analysis of kernel and applications during run-time without requiring special patches to be applied to the kernel or to the respective application. The framework uses a multitude of probes to provide events that can be coupled with functions via a scripting language. This, for example, allows developers to output the respective function parameters when calling a kernel function.

According to the developers, SystemTap is equivalent to the Solaris Dtrace system. However, Dtrace is controversial among kernel developers because the framework's handling is said to be very complex. SystemTap is developed with the support of Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Hitachi and Oracle; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 already includes the framework. SystemTap is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

(crve)

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