LTTng
| Company type | Open-source software project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founder | Mathieu Desnoyers |
| Products | Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation (LTTng) |
| Website | lttng |
LTTng (short for Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation) is a software suite designed for comprehensive tracing of the Linux kernel, applications, and libraries in a correlated manner. Created by Mathieu Desnoyers in 2005, it serves as the successor to the original Linux Trace Toolkit.
Utilizing Linux kernel Tracepoint instrumentation alongside kprobes and Perf performance counters, LTTng is engineered to minimize overhead, making it an effective tool for diagnosing intricate system issues.
Features
LTTng tackles complex challenges such as identifying performance limitations in parallel computing and real-time environments. It also facilitates straightforward integration of user-defined instrumentation.
Structure
This toolkit comprises kernel modules dedicated to tracing within the Linux kernel and shared libraries for application and library-level tracing. Management is handled by a session daemon through the lttng command-line utility. Additionally, it works with the Babeltrace project to transform trace data into human-readable logs via the libbabeltrace library.
Deployment
Distributed as packages, LTTng is compatible with all leading Linux platforms and FreeBSD. Prominent enterprise adopters include Google, IBM, Autodesk, Siemens, Nokia, Sony, and Ericsson. It is incorporated into various development environments such as Wind River Workbench, Mentor Graphics Mentor Embedded Linux, ELinOS embedded Linux, MontaVista Mobilinux 5.0, STLinux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time editions.
Trace information collected can be analyzed and visualized using open-source applications like LTTV viewer and Eclipse Trace Compass or through commercial tools including Mentor Graphics Sourcery Analyzer and Percepio Tracealyzer.
The components LTTng-modules, LTTng-UST, LTTng-tools, and Babeltrace continue to be actively developed by a collaborative open-source community.
See also
Further reading
- LTTng, Filling the Gap Between Kernel Instrumentation and a Widely Usable Kernel Tracer
- LTTng: Tracing across execution layers
- Tracing for Hardware, Driver, and Binary Reverse Engineering in Linux