lttng-sessiond — LTTng 2 tracing session daemon
lttng-sessiond [--background|--daemonize] [--sig-parent] [--config=PATH] [--group=GROUP] [--load=PATH] [--agent-tcp-port=PORT] [--apps-sock=PATH] [--client-sock=PATH] [--no-kernel| [--kmod-probes=PROBE[,PROBE]…] [--extra-kmod-probes=PROBE[,PROBE]…] [--kconsumerd-err-sock=PATH] [--kconsumerd-cmd-sock=PATH]] [--ustconsumerd32-err-sock=PATH] [--ustconsumerd64-err-sock=PATH] [--ustconsumerd32-cmd-sock=PATH] [--ustconsumerd64-cmd-sock=PATH] [--consumerd32-path=PATH] [--consumerd32-libdir=PATH] [--consumerd64-path=PATH] [--consumerd64-libdir=PATH] [--quiet| [-v|-vv|-vvv] [--verbose-consumer]]
The Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation is an open source software package used for correlated tracing of the Linux kernel, user applications, and user libraries.
LTTng consists of Linux kernel modules (for Linux kernel tracing) and dynamically loaded libraries (for user application and library tracing).
The LTTng session daemon is a tracing registry which allows the user to interact with multiple tracers (kernel and user space) within the same container, a tracing session. Traces can be gathered from the Linux kernel and/or from instrumented applications (see lttng-ust(3)). You can aggregate and read the events of LTTng traces using babeltrace(1).
To trace the Linux kernel, the session daemon needs to be running as
root. LTTng uses a tracing group to allow specific users to interact
with the root session daemon. The default tracing group name is
tracing. You can use the --group option to set the tracing
group name to use.
Session daemons can coexist. You can have a session daemon running as user Alice that can be used to trace her applications alongside a root session daemon or a session daemon running as user Bob.
The LTTng session daemon manages trace data consumer daemons by spawning them when necessary. You do not need to manage the consumer daemons manually.
Note:It is highly recommended to start the session daemon at boot time for stable and long-term tracing.
When the session daemon starts, it automatically loads session configuration files.
The following directories are searched, non-recursively, in this order for configuration files to load on launch:
$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng/sessions/auto ($LTTNG_HOME defaults to $HOME)
/etc/lttng/sessions/auto
Note that both the directory containing the tracing session configurations and the session daemon binary must share the same UID for the configurations to be automatically loaded.
The --load option overrides the default directories and the UID
check. The session daemon simply checks if the path is accessible and
tries to load every tracing session configuration in it. When this
option is specified, the default directories are not searched for
configuration files. When the option is not specified, both default
directories are searched for configuration files.
If the --load option’s argument is a directory, then all the
tracing session configurations found in all the files in this directory
are loaded. If the argument is a file, then all the tracing session
configurations found in this file are loaded.
-b, --background
Start as Unix daemon, but keep file descriptors (console) open.
Use the --daemonize option instead to close the file
descriptors.
-d, --daemonize
Start as Unix daemon, and close file descriptors (console). Use the
--background option instead to keep the file descriptors
open.
-f, --config=PATH
Load session daemon configuration from path PATH.
-g, --group=GROUP
Use GROUP as Unix tracing group (default: tracing).
-l, --load=PATH
Automatically load tracing session configurations from PATH,
either a directory or a file, instead of loading them from the
default search directories.
-S, --sig-parent
Send SIGUSR1 to parent process to notify readiness.
Note:This is used by lttng(1) to get notified when the session daemon is ready to accept commands. When building a third party tool on liblttng-ctl, this option can be very handy to synchronize the control tool and the session daemon.
--extra-kmod-probes=PROBE[,PROBE]…
Load specific LTTng Linux kernel modules when kernel tracing
is enabled (--no-kernel option is not specified), in
addition to loading the default list of LTTng kernel modules.
Only the name of the probe needs to be specified, without the
lttng-probe- prefix and without the kernel module extension suffix.
For example, specify sched to load the lttng-probe-sched.ko kernel
module.
--kmod-probes=PROBE[,PROBE]…
Only load specific LTTng Linux kernel modules when kernel tracing
is enabled (--no-kernel option is not specified).
Only the name of the probe needs to be specified, without the
lttng-probe- prefix and without the kernel module extension suffix.
For example, specify sched to load the lttng-probe-sched.ko kernel
module.
--no-kernel
Disable Linux kernel tracing.
--agent-tcp-port=PORT
Listen on TCP port PORT for agent application registrations
-a, --apps-sock=PATH
Set application Unix socket path to PATH.
-c, --client-sock=PATH
Set client Unix socket path to PATH.
--consumerd32-libdir=PATH
Set 32-bit consumer daemon library directory to PATH.
--consumerd32-path=PATH
Set 32-bit consumer daemon binary path to PATH.
--consumerd64-libdir=PATH
Set 64-bit consumer daemon library directory to PATH.
--consumerd64-path=PATH
Set 64-bit consumer daemon binary path to PATH.
--kconsumerd-cmd-sock=PATH
Set Linux kernel consumer daemon’s command Unix socket path
to PATH.
--kconsumerd-err-sock=PATH
Set Linux kernel consumer daemon’s error Unix socket path
to PATH.
--ustconsumerd32-cmd-sock=PATH
Set 32-bit consumer daemon’s command Unix socket path to PATH.
--ustconsumerd64-cmd-sock=PATH
Set 64-bit consumer daemon’s command Unix socket path to PATH.
--ustconsumerd32-err-sock=PATH
Set 32-bit consumer daemon’s error Unix socket path to PATH.
--ustconsumerd64-err-sock=PATH
Set 64-bit consumer daemon’s error Unix socket path to PATH.
-q, --quiet
Suppress all messages, including warnings and errors.
-v, --verbose
Increase verbosity.
Three levels of verbosity are available, which are triggered by
appending additional v letters to the option
(that is, -vv and -vvv).
--verbose-consumer
Increase verbosity of consumer daemons spawned by this session daemon.
Note that command-line options override their equivalent environment variable.
LTTNG_ABORT_ON_ERROR
Set to 1 to abort the process after the first error is encountered.
LTTNG_APP_SOCKET_TIMEOUT
Application socket’s timeout (seconds) when sending/receiving commands. After this period of time, the application is unregistered by the session daemon. A value of 0 or -1 means an infinite timeout. Default value: 5.
LTTNG_CONSUMERD32_BIN
32-bit consumer daemon binary path.
The --consumerd32-path option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_CONSUMERD32_LIBDIR
32-bit consumer daemon library path.
The --consumerd32-libdir option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_CONSUMERD64_BIN
64-bit consumer daemon binary path.
The --consumerd64-path option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_CONSUMERD64_LIBDIR
64-bit consumer daemon library path.
The --consumerd64-libdir option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_DEBUG_NOCLONE
Set to 1 to disable the use of clone()/fork(). Setting this
variable is considered insecure, but it is required to allow
debuggers to work with the session daemon on some operating systems.
LTTNG_EXTRA_KMOD_PROBES
Load specific LTTng Linux kernel modules when kernel tracing
is enabled (--no-kernel option is not specified), in
addition to loading the default list of LTTng kernel modules.
The --extra-kmod-probes option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_KMOD_PROBES
Only load specific LTTng Linux kernel modules when kernel tracing
is enabled (--no-kernel option is not specified).
The --kmod-probes option overrides this variable.
LTTNG_NETWORK_SOCKET_TIMEOUT
Socket connection, receive and send timeout (milliseconds). A value of 0 or -1 uses the timeout of the operating system (default).
LTTNG_SESSION_CONFIG_XSD_PATH
Tracing session configuration XML schema definition (XSD) path.
$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng
User LTTng runtime and configuration directory.
$LTTNG_HOME/lttng-traces
Default output directory of LTTng traces. This can be overridden
with the --output option of the lttng-create(1)
command.
$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng/sessions/auto
Directory from which user tracing configuration files are automatically loaded when the session daemon starts (see lttng-save(1) and lttng-load(1) for saving and loading tracing sessions).
/etc/lttng/sessions/auto
Directory from which system-wide tracing configuration files are automatically loaded when the session daemon starts (see lttng-save(1) and lttng-load(1) for saving and loading tracing sessions).
$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng/lttng.conf
Default location of the session daemon configuration file (see the
--config option).
/etc/lttng/lttng.conf
System-wide location of the session daemon configuration file (see
the --config option).
Note:$LTTNG_HOME defaults to $HOME when not explicitly set.
Success
Error
Fatal error
For an unprivileged user running lttng-sessiond, the maximum number of
file descriptors per process is usually 1024. This limits the number of
traceable applications, since for each instrumented application, there
is two file descriptors per CPU and one more socket for bidirectional
communication.
For the root user, the limit is bumped to 65535. A future version will deal with this limitation.
If you encounter any issue or usability problem, please report it on the LTTng bug tracker.
Mailing list for support and
development: lttng-dev@lists.lttng.org
IRC channel: #lttng on irc.oftc.net
This program is part of the LTTng-tools project.
LTTng-tools is distributed under the
GNU General
Public License version 2. See the
LICENSE file
for details.
Special thanks to Michel Dagenais and the DORSAL laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal for the LTTng journey.
Also thanks to the Ericsson teams working on tracing which helped us greatly with detailed bug reports and unusual test cases.