LTTng (Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation) is a

system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. An example of system software is an operating system (OS) (like macOS, Linux, Android, and Microsoft Windows). Application software is software that allows users to d ...

package for correlated tracing of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

, applications and libraries. The project was originated by Mathieu Desnoyers with an initial release in 2005. Its predecessor is the Linux Trace Toolkit. LTTng uses the Tracepoint instrumentation of the

, as well as various other information sources such as kprobes, and the Perf performance monitoring counters. Designed for minimal performance impact and having a near-zero impact when not tracing, it is useful for

debugging In engineering, debugging is the process of finding the Root cause analysis, root cause, workarounds, and possible fixes for bug (engineering), bugs. For software, debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, Logf ...

a wide range of bugs that are otherwise extremely challenging.

Features

The challenging problems traceable with LTTng include, for example, performance problems on parallel systems and on real-time systems. Custom instrumentation is easy to add.

Structure

LTTng consists of kernel modules (for Linux kernel tracing) and dynamically linked libraries (for application and library tracing). It is controlled by a session daemon, which receives commands from a command line interface, lttng. The Babeltrace project allows translating traces into a human-readable log, and provides a trace reading library, libbabeltrace.

Deployment

LTTng is available as a set of packages. LTTng has at least basic support for all

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

-supported architectures (see the LTTng-modules README file for more details) as well as support for

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

. Major users include

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IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

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Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

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and

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

. It is included in Wind River Workbench,

Mentor Graphics Mentor Graphics Corporation was a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981, the company distributed products that ass ...

Mentor Embedded Linux, ELinOS embedded Linux, MontaVista Mobilinux 5.0, STLinux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time Linux distributions. Once collected, multiple solutions exist to process and visualize LTTng trace data (kernel and userspace) such as the open-source LTTV viewer,

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

Trace Compass or commercial tools such as

' Sourcery Analyzer and Percepio Tracealyzer. LTTng-modules, LTTng-UST, LTTng-tools and Babeltrace are actively developed by an open community.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://lttng.org
LTTng git repositoriesMontaVista Linux Platform Development Kit 5.0 datasheetOn the value of static tracepoints
Android (operating system) development software Free system software Debuggers Beta software

Features

Structure

Deployment

See also

Further reading

References

External links