libvirt: Systemtap of Libvirt
Description: libvirt, virtualization, virtualization API

# Systemtap of Libvirt

Contents

- Preparation

  - Libvirt

  - Systemtap

- Tracing events

- Tracing examples

Systemtap is a scripting language and tool for dynamically probing or tracing in Linux kernel space or user space. This page is about the usage of systemtap in libvirt tracing.

## Preparation

### Libvirt

Libvirt should be configured with the systemtap option to support libvirt probing events in systemtap.

For libvirt before 6.7.0, it can be configured by:

     mkdir build
     cd build
    ../configure --with-dtrace

For libvirt 6.7.0 or later, configure it by the meson (seeing libvirt compiling):

    meson build -Ddtrace=enabled

For the libvirt binaries installed by the package manager like dnf or apt, if libvirt systemtap tapset /usr/share/systemtap/tapset/libvirt_* exists, it means the libvirt enables the systemtap feature.

### Systemtap

For most of linux distributions, execute stap-prep by root to prepare the environment for systemtap after installing the systemtap. If your distribution doesn't have stap-prep, install the kernel debuginfo packages manually.

After these above, run this test command to confirm the systemtap works well:

    stap -e 'probe oneshot{ printf("hello world\n")}'

## Tracing events

The libvirt systemtap tracing events are defined in tapset /usr/share/systemtap/tapset/libvirt_*. Libvirt support these type of tracing events: dbus, event_glib, object, qemu, rpc.

List all tracing events in libvirt:

    grep 'probe libvirt.[a-z_0-9.]*' /usr/share/systemtap/tapset/libvirt_* -o|cut -f 2 -d :

## Tracing examples

Here is an example of the systemtap script to trace the QMP messages sent from libvirtd daemon to the qemu process. qmp.stp:

    probe begin
    {
      printf("Start tracing\n")
    }
    probe libvirt.qemu.monitor_send_msg
    {
      printf("QMPs: %s", msg);
    }

Then run the systemtap script attaching to the libvirtd process:

    stap qmp.stp -x `pidof libvirtd`

To trace a libvirtd started from command line, use the option -c

    stap qmp.stp -c "/usr/sbin/libvirtd"

Then after seeing the welcome message "Start tracing" from systemtap, then execute a virsh command associated with QMP, for example virsh domstats. Then get the QMP tracing logs from systemtap. For example, the result from virsh domstats

    QMPs: {"execute":"query-balloon","id":"libvirt-393"}
    QMPs: {"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/peripheral/balloon0","property":"guest-stats"},"id":"libvirt-394"}
    QMPs: {"execute":"query-blockstats","id":"libvirt-395"}
    QMPs: {"execute":"query-named-block-nodes","id":"libvirt-396"}
    QMPs: {"execute":"query-iothreads","id":"libvirt-397"}

For more examples of libvirt systemtap scripts, see the scripts in /usr/share/doc/libvirt-docs/examples/systemtap For more details of systemtap language, see document of systemtap