[OT] Re: [patch for 2.6.26 0/7] Architecture Independent Markers

Masami Hiramatsu
2008-03-28T13:38:45Z

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> furthermore, and because it's Friday again, let me remind folks that
> SystemTap has an even more significant bloat problem: the fact that it
> needs a huge download:

Ingo, that seems very off-topic...

> Installing:
> kernel-debuginfo x86_64 2.6.25-0.163.rc7.git1.fc9
> development-debuginfo 198 M
> Installing for dependencies:
> kernel-debuginfo-common x86_64 2.6.25-0.163.rc7.git1.fc9
> development-debuginfo 30 M
>
> Total download size: 229 M
>
> for _every_ updated kernel. That 229 MB size reduces the user base of
> SystemTap (which is otherwise a totally brilliant and cool tool) to 1%
> of its potential userbase, to those truly desperate persons who really
> _need_ to get their problem debugged somehow. But it's nowhere near
> usable as an easy, ad-hoc kernel instrumentation tool, just due to the
> sheer size it brings.

Sure, it is a thorny issue especially for users of daily-kernel-updating
distribution.

However, when updating kernel from tarball, We can get full set of debuginfo
just by building kernel with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO. I think it is enough
usable for kernel developers.

BTW, we already started working on the symbol-table based probing.
http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4311

> for heaven's sake, we can have 3 years of _full Linux kernel history_,
> with all 87875 commits, with full changelog and dependencies and full
> source code included, packed into a rather tight, 180 MB git repository
> ...
>
> [ and then i havent even begun about the on-disk footprint of this
> monstrum, after the packages have been installed: an additional 850 MB.
> Puh-lease ... ]

Thank for Moore's law and all storage engineers, nowadays we can buy
an 1TB(=1000GB!) HDD with less than $300!(I also surprised...)
And many other compressed filesystem can be used for saving disk space.

Best regards,

--
Masami Hiramatsu

Software Engineer
Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc.
Software Solutions Division

e-mail: mhiramat@redhat.com