SYSTEMTAP BEGINNER'S GUIDE: DOCUMENTATION PLAN
This is the project page for the SystemTap Beginner's Guide project. It contains high-level information regarding each phase of The Publication Lifecycle, used by Engineering Content Services as a documentation project template.
For internal Red Hat developers: The mother ticket for this project is RT3#25685.
Purpose
At present, nearly all existing documentation for SystemTap comes with a high prerequisite: significant knowledge of the Linux kernel, preferably with a background in programming (e.g. C). This presents a high barrier to entry for many system administrators who do not meet these skill requirements.
The goal of the SystemTap Beginner's Guide is to allow RHCT-level users to run SystemTap for common troubleshooting, system monitoring, and performance-tuning tasks.
Process
Documentation source repository will be in SystemTap CVS repositories (to be provided by SystemTap team)
- ECS to provide schedule and project delivery information (TBD)
Schedule
Content Specification: August 25 * September 5 (10 days)
- finalize upstream and output (i.e. SVN/CVS repo to use; XML source or HTML?)
- finalize coverage
finalize sources and designate SME for each section (especially for the library of preset SystemTap scripts)
- table of contents
Implementation and Development: September 8 * October 31 (40 days)
- content development (SME)
- content development (writer)
- weekly reports submitted every Monday, NC time (writer)
- contingent weekly meetings every Thursday, NC time (writer + SME)
Technical Review: November 3 * November 21 (15 days)
- review technical veracity of draft (SME)
- incorporate corrections (writer)
- sign-off on final draft
Editorial Review: November 24 * December 12 (15 days)
- final review for style, format, usability (editor, Brian Forte)
- incorporate editorial suggestions (writer)
- weekly reports submitted every Monday, NC time (writer)
- schedule assumes inflation due to "Errata crunch time"
Coverage
1.Introduction to SystemTap
- goals
- usage
- architecture
SystemTap VS other monitoring tools
- 1. advantages
- 2. limitations
2. Understanding how SystemTap works (high-level)
- how to read this book
1. Using the library of preset SystemTap scripts
3. Using SystemTap
- setup and installation
SystemTap scripts and Tapsets
3.Useful SystemTap scripts
- When to Use
- How to use: editing (when possible), running
- Analyzing output, common recommendations, mini-case studies
- Disk
- I/O
- Kernel
- Network
- Syscalls
- Others
- 1. CPU
- 2. Scheduler
- 3. Locking
4.Understanding SystemTap errors
- by type (parse, type, symbol, etc)
- analyzing what went wrong
6. Tips and Tricks
7. References
References
For a quick howto on Publican setup and use, refer to this link.
Meetings
The meeting minutes can be viewed at the BeginnersGuideMinutes page.