Linux port of DTrace

February 2012
Paul D. Fox
paul.d.fox@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/crispeditor
http://www.crisp.demon.co.uk

Blog - latest news and stuff about the dtrace project:

   http://crtags.blogspot.com/
   http://www.crisp.demon.co.uk/blog/

Download dtrace tarballs for linux here:

   https://github.com/dtrace4linux/linux
   ftp://crisp.dynalias.com/pub/release/website/dtrace

My public dropbox, likely out of date:

   http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45405441/dtrace-latest.tar.gz

Introduction
============

This is a port of the Sun DTrace user and kernel code to Linux.
No  linux  kernel  code  is  touched in this build, but what is
produced  is  a dynamically loadable kernel module. This avoids
licensing issues and allows people to load and update dtrace as
they desire.

The  goal  of  this project is to make available DTrace for the
Linux  platforms. By making it available for everyone, they can
use  it  to  optimise their systems and tools, and in return, I
get to benefit from their work.

PayPal
======
If  you want to make a donation for this software, feel free to
do so. Nothing is asked of you - it is genuinely free software,
but it can help guage interest and appreciation if you do.

You  can  pay  by  visiting  the  link  below  and  clicking on
"Donate", or use this reference for donations:

   foxpaypal@crisp.demon.co.uk

Licensing
=========

The  original  DTrace is licensed under Sun's (now Oracle) CDDL
license.  Original  copyrights  are left intact. No GPL code is
incorporated into the release, to avoid legal conflicts.

Any  mistakes  or omissions in copyright attribution will be my
mistake, so please let me know if there are such cases.

The  linux kernel was referred to in order to engineer the glue
for  dtrace  behavior, and there is no intention of making this
code fall under anything other than CDDL. (If Oracle migrate to
a GPL friendly license, then this port of dtrace can follow). I
do  not  own  the license or assert any rights on the licensing
other than that expected of me as a consumer/supplier.

I  have  no political affiliation or preference for a licensing
scheme,  simply  that  Sun/Oracle has gracefully donated to the
community a large body of work.

I  reserve  the  right to change the licensing model for my own
code  at  a later date, when and if someone puts forward a case
as to the correct license agreement.

If  the code is useful to you - great. Spread it around and get
people to use, debug and enhance it.

GIT Repository
==============

  https://github.com/dtrace4linux/dtrace

(Theres an older and orphaned github repository under 
Peter McCormicks name, please ignore this as it has not been
updated in a long while and is no longer active).

Installation
============

Very simple:

	$ make all
	$ make install
	$ make load           (need to be root or have sudo access)

More details
============

Building is done in a build/ directory. The makefiles allow
you to compile for alternate kernel releases in the same tree,
which is useful for cross-version checking.

The result is:

	build/dtrace               User land executable
	build/drti.o               Object file for USDT apps
	build/driver/dtracedrv.ko  Kernel loadable module

Installing will copy them to Solaris compliant locations:

	/usr/sbin/dtrace
	/usr/lib/dtrace/64/drti.o


You dont need to 'install' to run dtrace, but you will need
to load the driver.

Kernel versioning
=================
dtrace relies on a kernel module and so a binary is needed
per system you deploy to, or kernel version.

dtrace is sensitive to the kernel - and attempts to cater for that,
but very old, or very new kernels may not have been validated.
Please feed back if that is the case.

No Linux Kernel source modifications required
=============================================

This is important for a number of reasons -- unless dtrace
is accepted into the kernel, it has to live with changes to header
files and data structures. Also, from a licensing perspective it
is not valid for dtrace to touch your sources. It is also much
easier to not even require kernel sources - so long as 
a kernel build environment is available.

INSTALLATION
============

Run 'make' with no arguments to see the current options.

make all
	to compile the drivers and user space commands. Check the file
	Packages, for hints on what you need (not much, but libelf, kernel
	source, flex/yacc -- bison will do).

make install
	Copy dtrace binary and driver to correct install location.

make load
	To load the drivers, and then you can play with cmd/dtrace/dtrace.

make unl
	to unload the drivers.

make test
	To run the userland cmd/dtrace regression test

For AS4/Centos
==============
	yum install elfutils-libelf-devel