Dynamic Probes - Debugging by Stealth

Suparna Bhattacharya

Dynamic Probes has been around in the Linux Community for a couple years. Originally it was conceived as a stealth system debugger - i.e. one that you might be more happy to use in a production environment - its capability and application has expanded way beyond these modest beginnings. Since its initial release it has undergone continual development and enhancement. During 2002 DProbes has undergone major surgery: not only have we enhancing its capability, but we have streamlined the kernel patch and making it more generic. In June 2002 we released a major usability tool - the DProbes C Compiler (dpcc). DProbes was also ported to Power and zSeries architectures in 2002. Finally but not least DProbes was made a ready candidate for the 2.5 kernel and for several major distributions and has in fact been accepted by TurboLinux and MontaVista at the time of writing. So much has changed it seems an opportune moment to report on recent developments and work in progress. In this paper we will cover the following topics: