Re: Hooking into Linux using the Linux Trace Toolkit

From: Karim Yaghmour (karymat_private)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 01:30:00 PDT

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    Crispin Cowan wrote:
    > I conferred with Greg, and determined that we're saying the same thing, but I'm not
    > saying it as well :-)
    
    Great.
    
    > ... and that appears tobe a proposal to substantially expand the scope of this
    > project.
    > 
    >    * Architecturally, this coupling makes sense, because both tracing and security
    >      need extensive hooking.
    >    * Politically, it is much more questionable.  Linus said he would accept a security
    >      module abstraction.  He said nothing about a trace facility.
    > 
    > I don't wanna risk the acceptability of the LSM project by expanding its scope.  If
    > you (Karim) want to float this past Linus, I suggest that you ask him.  If he says
    > yes, then I'm all in.
    > 
    > I don't mean to be harsh.  Architecturally, it makes a lot of sense to combine thease
    > features.  It is just politically difficult.  So really, if you can get Linus' buy-in,
    > go for it.
    
    Well yes, definitely there are political differences. Which, as you point
    out, takes nothing away from the fact that the requirements are almost
    identical.
    
    > >
    > > I'm not sure LTT actually compares to Paradyn. It seems to me that
    > > the purposes are different. In LTT, the hooking portion is but a
    > > small part of the whole toolset. We need the hooks to retrieve
    > > meaningfull information about the system's behavior. The collected
    > > information is then fed to the analysis tool which provides the
    > > user with a view of the dynamic behavior of the system.
    > 
    > That actually sounds kinda similar to Paradyn.
    
    I disagree as to the hooking part, the dynamic hooking part is a very
    central theme of their research as can be attested by their web-site and
    papers. I agree about the "feeding an analysis" tool part, but see
    below.
    
    > 
    > > As you point out, Paradyn aims dynamic performance profiling and optimization.
    > > But LTT isn't aimed at dynamic optimization. Instead, it is aimed at:
    > > -Dynamic behavior reconstruction
    > > -Performance measurement
    > > -Synchronization-problem solving
    > > -Security auditing
    > > -Intrusion detection
    > 
    > I think you bound "dynamic" to the wrong scope. Paradyn is about achieving performance
    > optimization through performance modeling.  They do that through behavior
    > reconstruction & performance measurement.  The "dynamic" part is to allow dynamic
    > change of the parts of the program being profiled.
    
    I'm not sure I got this wrong, check out their web-page and the paper you
    refer to. They put a lot of emphasis on the dynamic modification part.
    Even the "project overview" section puts a lot of emphasis on the dynamic
    modification and, obviously, performance measurement. Of course all this
    has to do with "reconstruction & performance measurement" as you point
    out, but I didn't say the contrary.
    
    I see no reference on their site, though, on any effort to provide a tool
    that provides the user with a clear view of the dynamic behavior of the
    system at each point in time, compared to what is provided by LTT's visualization
    tool (http://www.opersys.com/LTT/screenshots.html). Jointly, I hardly see
    how anyone could use Pardyn to solve a synchronization problem or do any
    form of security auditing ...
    
    Performance is THE focus of ParaDyn whereas Performance is ONE OF THE focuses
    of LTT.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Karim
    
    ===================================================
                     Karim Yaghmour
                   karymat_private
          Embedded and Real-Time Linux Expert
    ===================================================
    
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