1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" []>
5 <book id="Tracepoints">
7 <title>The Linux Kernel Tracepoint API</title>
11 <firstname>Jason</firstname>
12 <surname>Baron</surname>
15 <email>jbaron@redhat.com</email>
23 This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
24 it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
25 License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
26 version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
31 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
32 useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
33 warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
34 See the GNU General Public License for more details.
38 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
39 License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
40 Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
45 For more details see the file COPYING in the source
46 distribution of Linux.
53 <title>Introduction</title>
55 Tracepoints are static probe points that are located in strategic points
56 throughout the kernel. 'Probes' register/unregister with tracepoints
57 via a callback mechanism. The 'probes' are strictly typed functions that
58 are passed a unique set of parameters defined by each tracepoint.
62 From this simple callback mechanism, 'probes' can be used to profile, debug,
63 and understand kernel behavior. There are a number of tools that provide a
64 framework for using 'probes'. These tools include Systemtap, ftrace, and
69 Tracepoints are defined in a number of header files via various macros. Thus,
70 the purpose of this document is to provide a clear accounting of the available
71 tracepoints. The intention is to understand not only what tracepoints are
72 available but also to understand where future tracepoints might be added.
76 The API presented has functions of the form:
77 <function>trace_tracepointname(function parameters)</function>. These are the
78 tracepoints callbacks that are found throughout the code. Registering and
79 unregistering probes with these callback sites is covered in the
80 <filename>Documentation/trace/*</filename> directory.
86 !Iinclude/trace/events/irq.h