SystemTap tapsets for the real-time Linux kernel

Abstract

Latency is an essential factor for measuring effectiveness of realtime applications. An effective realtime system aims at guaranteeing a practical deadline for a task, rather than improving throughput of the system. A subset of these applications includes the ones, which deploy realtime operating systems (RTOS). Linux RTOS has varied applications, few of them being at business trading centre, submarines, missile launching systems, satellite navigation system, etc. Considering the criticality of these systems, its top most priority that these RTOS should be almost near to perfection as they form the core. Hence, these systems need to be tested thoroughly, before they are applied anywhere. SystemTap is one such scripting tool which extracts information from a running kernel, which is unlike the traditional method of using printks. We aim at testing the performance of given RTOS by writing SystemTap scripts for various scenarios(provided by RTOS development teams) that arose as a result of problems faced in the past. � 2010 IEEE.