[libvirt] [PATCH 0/2] [RFC] Use the power of SystemTap to get rid of all* deadlocks forever*

Many moons ago, I wanted to make locking more debuggable from logs. An idea appeared that this might be better off with SystemTap. I let it rot for a while and some time back I had a deadlock that I wanted to try it on. So I started scripting it and here's the work (in progress). Well, the idea is simple. For each mutex that is about to get locked, append it's symname and pid that locked it into the list A, when it get's locked move it to list B and when it's unlocked, remove it. Then whenever the user presses ^C, the script prints all the locks that were locked (with their particular backtraces) and locks that are waiting to be locked. This could be enhanced that it would print both pieces of information only for the locks that are waiting to be acquired. But I don't really care what color the shed will have. Here are some problems I'd love to get any help with: - I cannot run it against built git version, two problems with that: - When I'm not root, staprun needs setuid bit set and that is, of course, incompatible with the needed LD_LIBRARY_PATH. - Even when I am root, I'm unable to get any backtrace that goes beyond virLogMutex() no matter how I'm loading the debug symbols. - When running with installed libvirtd, I am not getting as nice backtrace as I would in gdb (but that's probably the only way how systemtap will get any backtrace so it's better than nothing). And I'm unable to get line numbers even with addr2line. I'd be interested in hearing how this works for others, or any hints on how to make the script so good that I could post it for the inclusion upstream. Any best practices about systemtap scripts are welcomed as well. _______________________________________________________ (*) Not quite, I just wanted you to notice this mail ;) Martin Kletzander (2): lock-debug.stp DO NOT APPLY: deadlock test daemon/libvirtd.c | 1 + examples/systemtap/lock-debug.stp | 115 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 116 insertions(+) create mode 100644 examples/systemtap/lock-debug.stp -- 2.1.0