2.42. systemtap

The systemap-testsuite subpackage is designed for installation on development Workstation machines, not limited Client variants. More complete RPM dependencies now mandate the presence of several non-Client RPM packages, so it is no longer installable on the Client variant. Attempting to update can fail if the update includes the system-testsuite subpackage. To work around this problem remove the systemtap-testsuite subpackage from a Client machine before upgrading the systemtap package.

Running some user-space probe test cases provided by the systemtap-testsuite package fail with an Unknown symbol in module error on some architectures. These test cases include (but are not limited to):

Because of a known bug in the latest SystemTap update, new SystemTap installations do not unload old versions of the uprobes.ko module. Some updated user-space probe tests provided by the systemtap-testsuite package use symbols available only in the latest uprobes.ko module (also provided by the latest SystemTap update). As such, running these user-space probe tests result in the error mentioned earlier.

If you encounter this error, simply run rmmod uprobes to manually remove the older uprobes.ko module before running the user-space probe test again. (BZ#499677)

SystemTap currently uses GCC to probe user-space events. GCC is, however, unable to provide debuggers with precise location list information for parameters. In some cases, GCC also fails to provide visibility on some parameters. As a consequence, SystemTap scripts that probe user-space may return inaccurate readings. (BZ#239065)