Linux Tracing Techniques

Explore essential Linux tracing techniques in this 41-minute conference talk by Vandana Salve from Prasme Systems. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental building blocks that form the foundation of Linux tracing, including ftrace, kprobes, uprobes, tracepoints, and ptrace. Learn how these concepts are utilized by modern Linux tracing tools and observe practical demonstrations through tracing examples. Delve into topics such as system calls, strace usage, child process tracing, filtering techniques, and obtaining system call summaries. Discover the inner workings of Ftrace, its tracing capabilities, event enabling, and format analysis. Examine function tracers, function graph tracers, and the process of setting filters. Compare tracers and events to enhance your Linux debugging and performance analysis skills.

Intro
Agenda
What is tracing
System calls
Understanding strace
Simple example: strace at command line
Tracing child process
Filtering the strace by category
Obtaining system call summary
How does Ftrace works
Ftrace - what can be traced
Enabling events
Event formats
Events calling
Function tracer
Function graph tracer
Setting filters
Tracers vs Events