Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:06:44PM -0700, George Gluck wrote:> Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX?There is no DTrace port to AIX, and to the best of my knowledge none is being considered. Because AIX runs only on POWER/PowerPC, the port would be substantial: the techniques used by FBT, SDT, USDT and the pid provider would all have to be developed from scratch. (These providers all have intimate knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.) Still, the obstacles are only technical: there is nothing in the license to prevent such a port. Should you encounter anyone from IBM who would like to scope out a port, feel free to put them in contact with us; we''re happy to lend our time and expertise to ports to other operating systems and architectures... - Bryan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc
On 8/1/06, Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng.sun.com> wrote:> > On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:06:44PM -0700, George Gluck wrote: > > Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? > > There is no DTrace port to AIX, and to the best of my knowledge none is > being considered. Because AIX runs only on POWER/PowerPC, the port would be > substantial: the techniques used by FBT, SDT, USDT and the pid provider > would all have to be developed from scratch. (These providers all have > intimate knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.) > Still, the obstacles are only technical: there is nothing in the license > to prevent such a port. Should you encounter anyone from IBM who would > like to scope out a port, feel free to put them in contact with us; > we''re happy to lend our time and expertise to ports to other operating > systems and architectures... >given IBM''s a major contributor to the systemtap project, I don''t see them porting DTrace. They really do think that they are going to make systemtap into something as usable as dtrace. James Dickens uadmin.blogspot.com> - Bryan > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc > _______________________________________________ > dtrace-discuss mailing list > dtrace-discuss at opensolaris.org >
While AIX does not have DTrace, it does have trace. trace has very minimal amount of probes (approximately 400, I think). Rather than seeing probe fires in real-time, you use trace to collect various data and then use various userland tools to "drill down" in that collection of data to find what you want. Derek E. Lewis dlewis at solnetworks.net http://riemann.solnetworks.net/~dlewis On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, George Gluck wrote:> Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? > > > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > dtrace-discuss mailing list > dtrace-discuss at opensolaris.org > >
On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, James Dickens wrote:> given IBM''s a major contributor to the systemtap project, I don''t see > them porting DTrace. They really do think that they are going to make > systemtap into something as usable as dtrace.It does good to think of IBM as a two-headed beast, each with separate agendas. There''s the Open Source/Linux agenda, and there''s the agenda that relates firmly to mainframes, UNIX, etc. Sometimes these two agendas collide and you see something AIX 5L''s "Linux affinity", which enables you to run applications built on Linux in AIX without any sort of emulation. This sort of collaboration rarely happens and when it does, it''ll have little market effect. As Systemtap is part of IBM''s Open Source/Linux agenda, I wouldn''t put my money on them ever *considering* to port it to their enterprise UNIX, AIX.
Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng.sun.com> wrote:> > On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:06:44PM -0700, George Gluck wrote: > > Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? > > There is no DTrace port to AIX, and to the best of my knowledge none is > being considered. Because AIX runs only on POWER/PowerPC, the port would be > substantial: the techniques used by FBT, SDT, USDT and the pid provider > would all have to be developed from scratch. (These providers all have > intimate knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.)Does this mean that supporting dtrace on Solaris PPC will be a hard thing to do? J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Joerg Schilling wrote:> Does this mean that supporting dtrace on Solaris PPC will be a hard thing to > do?I think "nontrivial"* would be the right expression. :-) * See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/nontrivial.html -- Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member President, Rite Online Inc. Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638 URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 12:39:14AM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:> Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng.sun.com> wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:06:44PM -0700, George Gluck wrote: > > > Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? > > > > There is no DTrace port to AIX, and to the best of my knowledge none is > > being considered. Because AIX runs only on POWER/PowerPC, the port would be > > substantial: the techniques used by FBT, SDT, USDT and the pid provider > > would all have to be developed from scratch. (These providers all have > > intimate knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.) > > > Does this mean that supporting dtrace on Solaris PPC will be a hard thing to > do?It''s probably not too bad; having to do it *on top of* porting dtrace to a new kernel is what makes it really annoying. Cheers, - jonathan -- Jonathan Adams, Solaris Kernel Development
On 02/08/2006, at 4:00 PM, Jonathan Adams wrote:> On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 12:39:14AM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote: >> Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng.sun.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:06:44PM -0700, George Gluck wrote: >>>> Does anyone know of a DTrace port to AIX? >>> >>> There is no DTrace port to AIX, and to the best of my knowledge >>> none is >>> being considered. Because AIX runs only on POWER/PowerPC, the >>> port would be >>> substantial: the techniques used by FBT, SDT, USDT and the pid >>> provider >>> would all have to be developed from scratch. (These providers >>> all have >>> intimate knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.) >> >> >> Does this mean that supporting dtrace on Solaris PPC will be a >> hard thing to >> do? > > It''s probably not too bad; having to do it *on top of* porting > dtrace to a new > kernel is what makes it really annoying. > > Cheers, > - jonathanIt will be interesting to see how much PowerPC work has been done by Apple. It will also be interesting to see how much of it they release.
> It will be interesting to see how much PowerPC work has been done by > Apple.Yes, it''s great news from Apple today. I discuss what Apple''s done here: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc?entry=dtrace_on_mac_os_x They''ve done FBT for PowerPC, but I don''t think they have intention of doing the pid or SDT providers for PowerPC (those look to be x86 only on Mac OS X for the immediate future) -- but they''ll presumably be able to speak to that directly here. And yes, the presence of FBT on PowerPC should make the AIX port that much easier -- so how about it, IBM? ;) Anyway, in case it needs to be said: Apple''s announcement today is a huge win for DTrace users, as it (ultimately) expands our community to Apple''s footprint of 19 million users. Welcome, dogcows! - Bryan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc
Hi Bryan, Have you had a chance to take a look at Xray yet, from the short ext at the webpage it sounds like a cool concept. Cheers, Peter Bryan Cantrill wrote:>> It will be interesting to see how much PowerPC work has been done by >> Apple. >> > > Yes, it''s great news from Apple today. I discuss what Apple''s done here: > > http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc?entry=dtrace_on_mac_os_x > > They''ve done FBT for PowerPC, but I don''t think they have intention of > doing the pid or SDT providers for PowerPC (those look to be x86 only on > Mac OS X for the immediate future) -- but they''ll presumably be able to > speak to that directly here. And yes, the presence of FBT on PowerPC should > make the AIX port that much easier -- so how about it, IBM? ;) > > Anyway, in case it needs to be said: Apple''s announcement today is a huge > win for DTrace users, as it (ultimately) expands our community to Apple''s > footprint of 19 million users. Welcome, dogcows! > > - Bryan > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc > _______________________________________________ > dtrace-discuss mailing list > dtrace-discuss at opensolaris.org >
On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 12:42:15PM +0800, Peter Karlsson wrote:> Hi Bryan, > > Have you had a chance to take a look at Xray yet, from the short ext at > the webpage it sounds like a cool concept.We didn''t get in an in-depth look, but what sounds like some of the coolest stuff in Xray -- namely, the ability to use it to build ad hoc DTrace scripts -- didn''t get any mention in the keynote. There''s an Xray session later this week, and we plan on attending; we''ll report our findings... - Bryan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc
On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 01:26:20PM +1000, Boyd Adamson wrote:> It will be interesting to see how much PowerPC work has been done by > Apple.The fbt provider is working on PPC and they have aspirations of getting the pid (and USDT) provider working. Very cool stuff -- I''m looking forward to it. Adam -- Adam Leventhal, Solaris Kernel Development http://blogs.sun.com/ahl