# Current status of dtrace?



## Maledictus (Nov 20, 2008)

Hi all,

does anyone know where to get information about the current status of dtrace on FreeBSD? I'm especially interested in sdt/userland fbt. Maybe we could create a wiki page about it.

Kind regards
Maledictus


----------



## RudiK (Nov 21, 2008)

There is a wiki entry already (http://wiki.freebsd.org/LiqunLi/DTrace_ToolKit), not very informative, perhaps we can get the author to add some updates.


----------



## Maledictus (Nov 21, 2008)

Hmm, ok. That would be the way to go. Anyone has more info?


----------



## trasz@ (Nov 22, 2008)

As far as I know, right now DTrace supports kernel providers, but not userland ones.


----------



## Maledictus (Nov 23, 2008)

Ok, thanks. Is jb@ working on adding more providers?


----------



## rdivacky@ (Dec 16, 2008)

Maledictus said:
			
		

> Ok, thanks. Is jb@ working on adding more providers?



I guess jb@ might have some stuff in the queue but he's busy so he has not commited it yet. also, with the 7.1R fiasco (dtrace MFC 2 days before code freeze) I guess he's a bit hesitant to commit some more things 

I wonder why dtrace is not on default in -current though


----------



## nox@ (Jan 5, 2009)

rdivacky@ said:
			
		

> ...
> I wonder why dtrace is not on default in -current though



Maybe because (k)gdb doesnt understand it yet?  I.e. with a dtrace-enabled kernel backtraces always look like there are no debug symbols even when there are...


----------



## Maledictus (Jan 8, 2009)

Ah, that's a good explanation.


----------



## rwatson@ (Jan 25, 2009)

Some of these issues are being actively worked on in HEAD; in particular, there is a problem in which CTF generation appears not to be compatible with statically compiled binaries. I think there's room for other people who have time and interest to get involved here -- I've recently been looking at the set of kernel data providers and adding new SDT() probes is really quite straight forward. There's a FreeBSD.org wiki page on adding SDT() probes here:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/HOWTO-dtrace-sdt

It's worth checking Solaris or Mac OS X first to see if they have a set of probes similar to the ones you're adding so that we can make them as well-aligned as possible.  That way tools, such as the DTrace toolkit, are as likely as possible to work across platforms as well. One issue I ran into yesterday is that our SYSINIT()-based SDT probe declaration doesn't permit '-' characters to be used in probe names, which was an issue for the callout probes I added:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-head/2009-January/003096.html


----------



## Graaf_van_Vlaanderen (Mar 13, 2009)

Any idea in which release it will be officially released as stable?

I tried it today, while running a heavy loading octave script and I received a kernel panic, while using 'hotkernel'.


----------



## Maledictus (Mar 14, 2009)

Afaik there are no plans currently when to declare it stable.


----------



## foo_daemon (May 13, 2009)

George V. Neville-Neil (I think) stated in a recent interview that userland Dtrace will happen in the '8.0 timeframe'.  What that means, exactly, is left to the reader as an exercise..  
citation @ 9:52 of
http://soekris.wtvl.k12.me.us/bsdtalk173.mp3


----------

