An introduction to kernel tracing with LTTng and Trace Compass

The Linux Trace Toolkit – next generation (LTTng) is a powerful and popular tracing system for the Linux kernel as well as userspace apps and libraries; it's open source, released under the Lesser GPL (modules and libraries), the GPL (tooling), and some components under the MIT license. Its original version (LTT) dates back to 2005, and LTTng is actively maintained. It has made a name for itself in helping track down performance and debug issues on multicore parallel and real-time systems. (Here, we're using the latest stable version at the time of writing – v2.13.)

The LTTng website (https://lttng.org/) does an excellent job documenting all aspects (learn what exactly tracing is at https://lttng.org/docs/v2.13/#doc-what-is-tracing). Due to space constraints, we shall simply refer you to the appropriate links. To install LTTng, please see this link: https://lttng.org/docs/v2.13/#doc-installing...