ERROR::SDT(7stap)                                          ERROR::SDT(7stap)

NAME         top

       error::sdt - <sys/sdt.h> marker failures

DESCRIPTION         top

       Systemtap's <sys/sdt.h> probes are modeled after the dtrace USDT API,
       but are implemented differently.  They leave a only a NOP instruction
       in the userspace program's text segment, and add an ELF note to the
       binary with metadata.  This metadata describes the marker's name and
       parameters.  This encoding is designed to be parseable by multiple
       tools (not just systemtap: GDB, the GNU Debugger, also contains
       support).  These allow the tools to find parameters and their types,
       wherever they happen to reside, even without DWARF debuginfo.

       The reason finding parameters is tricky is because the STAP_PROBE /
       DTRACE_PROBE markers store an assembly language expression for each
       operand, as a result of use of gcc inline-assembly directives.  The
       compiler is given a broad gcc operand constraint string ("nor") for
       the operands, which usually works well.  Usually, it does not force
       the compiler to load the parameters into or out of registers, which
       would slow down an instrumented program.  However, some
       instrumentation sites with some parameters do not work well with the
       default "nor" constraint.

       unresolveable at run-time
              GCC may emit strings that an assembler could resolve (from the
              context of compiling the original program), but a run-time
              tool cannot.  For example, the operand string might refer to a
              label of a local symbol that is not emitted into the ELF
              object file at all, which leaves no trace for the run-time.
              Reference to such parameters from within systemtap can result
              in "SDT asm not understood" errors.

       too complicated expression
              GCC might synthesize very complicated assembly addressing
              modes from complex C data types / pointer expressions.
              systemtap or gdb may not be able to parse some valid but
              complicated expressions.  Reference to such parameters from
              within systemtap can result in "SDT asm not understood"
              errors.

       overly restrictive constraint
              GCC might not be able to even compile the original program
              with the default "nor" constraint due to shortage of registers
              or other reasons.  A compile-time gcc error such as "asm
              operand has impossible constraints" may result.

       There are two general workarounds to this family of problems.

       change the constraints
              While compiling the original instrumented program, set the
              STAP_SDT_ARG_CONSTRAINT macro to different constraint strings.
              See the GCC manual about various options.  For example, on
              many machine architectures, "r" forces operands into
              registers, and "g" leaves operands essentially unconstrained.

       revert to debuginfo
              As long as the instrumented program compiles, it may be fine
              simply to keep using <sys/sdt.h> but eschew extraction of a
              few individual parameters.  In the worst case, disable
              <sys/sdt.h> macros entirely to eschew the compiled-in
              instrumentation.  If DWARF debuginfo was generated and
              preserved, a systemtap script could refer to the underlying
              source context variables instead of the positional STAP_PROBE
              parameters.

SEE ALSO         top

       stap(1),
       stapprobes(3stap),
       error::dwarf(7stap),
       http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constraints.html ,
       http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/UserSpaceProbeImplementation ,
       error::reporting(7stap)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemtap (a tracing and live-system
       analysis tool) project.  Information about the project can be found
       at ⟨https://sourceware.org/systemtap/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, send it to systemtap@sourceware.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://sourceware.org/git/systemtap.git⟩ on 2018-02-02.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
       itory was 2018-02-01.)  If you discover any rendering problems in
       this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
       more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
       of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                                                           ERROR::SDT(7stap)

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