Ftrace

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Tips

Tracing a specific process

(Adapted from email by Steven Rostedt) To trace just the kernel functions executed in the context of a particular function, set the pseudo-variable 'set-ftrace-pid', to the process id (pid) of the process.

If the process is not already running, you can use a wrapper shell script and the 'exec' command, to execute a command as a known pid.

Like so:

#!/bin/sh
echo $$ > /debug/tracing/set_ftrace_pid
# can set other filtering here
echo function > /debug/tracing/current_tracer
exec $*

In this example, '$$' is the pid of the currently executing process (the shell script. This is set into the 'set_ftrace_pid' variable, then the 'function' tracer is enabled. Then this script exec's the command (specified by the first argument to the script).

Example usage (assuming script is called 'trace_cmd'):

trace_cmd ls