Sophie: systemtap-1.2-1.fc13 i686

systemtap-1.2-1.fc13.i686.rpm

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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Chapter 1. Introduction</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="./Common_Content/css/default.css" type="text/css" /><meta name="generator" content="publican 1.6" /><meta name="package" content="Systemtap-SystemTap_Beginners_Guide-1.0-en-US-2.0-2" /><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="SystemTap Beginners Guide" /><link rel="up" href="index.html" title="SystemTap Beginners Guide" /><link rel="prev" href="pr01s02.html" title="2. We Need Feedback!" /><link rel="next" href="intro-systemtap-vs-others.html" title="1.2. SystemTap Capabilities" /></head><body class=""><p id="title"><a class="left" href="http://www.fedoraproject.org"><img src="Common_Content/images/image_left.png" alt="Product Site" /></a><a class="right" href="http://docs.fedoraproject.org"><img src="Common_Content/images/image_right.png" alt="Documentation Site" /></a></p><ul class="docnav"><li class="previous"><a accesskey="p" href="pr01s02.html"><strong>Prev</strong></a></li><li class="next"><a accesskey="n" href="intro-systemtap-vs-others.html"><strong>Next</strong></a></li></ul><div xml:lang="en-US" class="chapter" title="Chapter 1. Introduction" lang="en-US"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" id="introduction">Chapter 1. Introduction</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="introduction.html#goals">1.1. Documentation Goals</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="intro-systemtap-vs-others.html">1.2. SystemTap Capabilities</a></span></dt></dl></div><a id="id2967869" class="indexterm"></a><a id="id3005340" class="indexterm"></a><div class="para">
		SystemTap is a tracing and probing tool that allows users to study and monitor the activities of the operating system (particularly, the kernel) in fine detail. It provides information similar to the output of tools like <code class="command">netstat</code>, <code class="command">ps</code>, <code class="command">top</code>, and <code class="command">iostat</code>; however, SystemTap is designed to provide more filtering and analysis options for collected information.
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		For system administrators, SystemTap can be used as a performance monitoring tool for Fedora 10. It is most useful when other similar tools cannot precisely pinpoint a bottleneck in the system, requiring a deep analysis of kernel activity. In the same manner, application developers can also use SystemTap to monitor, in finer detail, how their application behaves within the Linux system.
	</div><div class="section" title="1.1. Documentation Goals"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" id="goals">1.1. Documentation Goals</h2></div></div></div><a id="id3037883" class="indexterm"></a><a id="id3425028" class="indexterm"></a><a id="id3024577" class="indexterm"></a><a id="id2718367" class="indexterm"></a><div class="para">
			SystemTap provides the infrastructure to monitor the running Linux kernel for detailed analysis. This can assist administrators and developers in identifying the underlying cause of a bug or performance problem.
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			Without SystemTap, monitoring the activity of a running kernel would require a tedious instrument, recompile, install, and reboot sequence. SystemTap is designed to eliminate this, allowing users to gather the same information by simply running user-written SystemTap scripts.
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			However, SystemTap was initially designed for users with intermediate to advanced knowledge of the kernel. This makes SystemTap less useful to administrators or developers with limited knowledge of and experience with the Linux kernel. Moreover, much of the existing SystemTap documentation is similarly aimed at knowledgeable and experienced users. This makes learning the tool similarly difficult.
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			To lower these barriers the SystemTap Beginners Guide was written with the following goals:
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					To introduce users to SystemTap, familiarize them with its architecture, and provide setup instructions for all kernel types.
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					To provide pre-written SystemTap scripts for monitoring detailed activity in different components of the system, along with instructions on how to run them and analyze their output.
				</div></li></ul></div></div></div><ul class="docnav"><li class="previous"><a accesskey="p" href="pr01s02.html"><strong>Prev</strong>2. We Need Feedback!</a></li><li class="up"><a accesskey="u" href="#"><strong>Up</strong></a></li><li class="home"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html"><strong>Home</strong></a></li><li class="next"><a accesskey="n" href="intro-systemtap-vs-others.html"><strong>Next</strong>1.2. SystemTap Capabilities</a></li></ul></body></html>