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I want to use systemtap for extracting details of my linux production server from remote access. I have some of the doubts regarding this:

  1. Whether is it necessary to have same kernel in both the linux production server and linux development server.If not then how to add the support for that?
  2. What are the minimum requirements to be present in the production server? Whether is it necessary to compile the kernel of the production server with the debuginfo ?
  3. How to enable users in some particular group to run the stap scripts?
pradeepchhetri
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2 Answers2

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The kernel running on the production server and linux development server do not need to be identical. The SystemTap Beginners Guide describes doing cross-compile where instrumentation for one kernel version is built on a machine currently running different kernel version. This is described in:

http://sourceware.org/systemtap/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/cross-compiling.html

The production server just needs the systemtap-runtime package. The production server does not need the kernel-devel or kernel-debuginfo installed when using the cross compile method.

There are stapusr and stapdev groups that allow people to run scripts. stapusr allows one to run existing script in /lib/modules/uname -r/systemtap directory (probably what is wanted in the case of running cross-compiled systemtap scripts). stapdev allow one to compile a script.

The stapusr and stapdev groups are described in:

http://sourceware.org/systemtap/SystemTap_Beginners_Guide/using-usage.html

William Cohen
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Another capability in systemtap >1.4 is remote execution:

development_host% stap --remote=user@deployment_host -e 'probe begin { exit() } '

where cross-compilation, module transfer, trace data transfer are all automagically done via an ssh transport, as long as the deployment_host has corresponding systemtap-runtime bits installed.

fche
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