This document describes a mechanism for collecting diagnostic trace information from running applications on the Fuchsia operating system.
The purpose of Fuchsia tracing is to provide a means to collect, aggregate, and visualize diagnostic tracing information from Fuchsia user space processes and from the Zircon kernel.
The trace manager is a system service which coordinates registration of trace providers. It ensures that tracing proceeds in an orderly manner and isolates components which offer trace providers from trace clients.
The trace manager implements two FIDL protocols:
Controller: Provides trace clients with the ability to enumerate trace providers and collect trace data.TraceRegistry: Provides trace providers with the ability to register themselves at runtime so that they can be discovered by the tracing system.TODO: The TraceRegistry should be replaced by a Namespace based approach to publish trace providers from components.
Components which can be traced or offer tracing information to the system implement the TraceProvider FIDL protocol and register it with the TraceRegistry. Once registered, they will receive messages whenever tracing is started or stopped and will have the opportunity to provide trace data encoded in the Fuchsia Trace Format.
The ktrace_provider program ingests kernel trace events and publishes trace records. This allows kernel trace data to be captured and visualized together with userspace trace data.
The trace program offers command-line access to tracing functionality for developers. It also supports converting Fuchsia trace archives into other formats, such as Catapult JSON records which can be visualized using Catapult (aka. chrome:://tracing).
Trace information can also be collected programmatically by using the Controller FIDL protocol directly.
Provides macros and inline functions for instrumenting C and C++ programs with trace points for capturing trace data during trace execution.
See <trace/event.h>.
This example records trace events marking the beginning and end of the execution of the “DoSomething” function together with its parameters.
#include <trace/event.h> void DoSomething(int a, std::string b) { TRACE_DURATION("example", "DoSomething", "a", a, "b", b); // Do something }
This example records trace events marking the beginning and end of the execution of the “DoSomething” function together with its parameters.
Unlike in C++, it is necessary to specify the type of each trace argument. In C++ such annotations are supported but are optional since the compiler can infer the type itself.
#include <trace/event.h> void DoSomething(int a, const char* b) { TRACE_DURATION("example", "DoSomething", "a", TA_INT32(a), "b", TA_STRING(b)); // Do something }
To completely suppress tracing within a compilation unit, define the NTRACE macro prior to including the trace headers. This causes the macros to behave as if tracing is always disabled so they will not produce trace records and they will have zero runtime overhead.
#define NTRACE #include <trace/event.h> void DoSomething(void) { // This will never produce trace records because the NTRACE macro was // defined above. TRACE_DURATION("example", "DoSomething"); }
This library provides C and C++ functions to register a process's trace engine with the Fuchsia tracing system. For tracing to work in your process, you must initialize the trace provider at some point during its execution (or implement your own trace handler to register the trace engine some other way).
The trace provider requires an asynchronous dispatcher to operate.
#include <lib/async-loop/cpp/loop.h> #include <trace-provider/provider.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { // Create a message loop. async::Loop loop(&kAsyncLoopConfigNoAttachToThread); // Start a thread for the loop to run on. // We could instead use async_loop_run() to run on the current thread. zx_status_t status = loop.StartThread(); if (status != ZX_OK) exit(1); // Create the trace provider. trace::TraceProvider trace_provider(loop.dispatcher()); // Do something... // The loop and trace provider will shut down once the scope exits. return 0; }
#include <lib/async-loop/cpp/loop.h> #include <trace-provider/provider.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { zx_status_t status; async_loop_t* loop; trace_provider_t* trace_provider; // Create a message loop. status = async_loop_create(&kAsyncLoopConfigNoAttachToThread, &loop); if (status != ZX_OK) exit(1); // Start a thread for the loop to run on. // We could instead use async_loop_run() to run on the current thread. status = async_loop_start_thread(loop, "loop", NULL); if (status != ZX_OK) exit(1); // Create the trace provider. async_dispatcher_t* dispatcher = async_loop_get_dispatcher(loop); trace_provider = trace_provider_create(dispatcher); if (!trace_provider) exit(1); // Do something... // Tear down. trace_provider_destroy(trace_provider); async_loop_shutdown(loop); return 0; }
Provides C++ types and functions for reading trace archives.
See <trace-reader/reader.h>.
When the developer initiates tracing, the trace manager asks all relevant trace providers to start tracing and provides each one with a trace buffer VMO into which they should write their trace records.
While a trace is running, the trace manager continues watching for newly registered trace providers and activates them if needed.
What happens when a trace provider's trace buffer becomes full while a trace is running depends on the buffering mode. See Buffering Modes below.
When tracing finishes, the trace manager asks all of the active trace providers to stop tracing then waits a short time for them to acknowledge that they have finished writing out their trace events.
The trace manager then reads and validates trace data written into the trace buffer VMOs by trace providers and creates a trace archive. The trace manager can often recover partial data even when trace providers terminate abnormally as long as they managed to store some data into their trace buffers. Note that in streaming mode the trace manager only needs to save the currently active rolling buffer. See Buffering Modes below.
The trace manager delivers the resulting trace archive to its client through a socket. This data is guaranteed to be well-formed according to the Fuchsia trace format (but it may be nonsensical if trace providers deliberately emit garbage data).
These are some important invariants of the transport protocol:
There are three buffering modes: oneshot, circular, and streaming. They specify different behaviors when the trace buffer fills.
Note that in all cases trace provider behavior is independent of each other. Other trace providers can continue to record trace events into their own buffers as usual until the trace stops, even as one provider's buffer fills. This may result in a partially incomplete trace.
If the buffer becomes full then that trace provider will stop recording events.
The trace buffer is effectively divided into three pieces: the “durable” buffer and two “rolling” buffers. The durable buffer is for records important enough that we don't want to risk dropping them. These include records for thread and string references.
Tracing begins by writing to the first rolling buffer. Once one rolling buffer fills tracing continues by writing to the other one.
If the durable buffer fills then tracing for the provider stops. Tracing in other providers continues as usual.
The trace buffer is effectively divided into three pieces: the “durable” buffer and two “rolling” buffers. The durable buffer is for records important enough that we don't want to risk dropping them. These include records for thread and string references.
Tracing begins by writing to the first rolling buffer. Once one rolling buffer fills tracing continues by writing to the other one, if it is available, and notifying the trace manager that the buffer is full. If the other rolling buffer is not available, then records are dropped until it becomes available. The other rolling buffer is unavailable between the point when it filled and when the manager reports back that the buffer's contents have been saved.
Whether records get dropped depends on the rate at which records are created vs the rate at which the trace manager can save the buffers. This can result in a partially incomplete trace, but is less important than perturbing program performance by waiting for a buffer to be saved.
If the durable buffer fills then tracing for the provider stops. Tracing in other providers continues as usual.
Notification of trace provider startup and shutdown is done via a FIFO, the handle of which is passed from the trace manager to each trace provider as part of the initial “start tracing” request. The form of each message is defined in <trace-provider/provider.h>. Packets are fixed size with the following format:
typedef struct trace_provider_packet { // One of TRACE_PROVIDER_*. uint16_t request; // For alignment and future concerns, must be zero. uint16_t reserved; // Optional data for the request. // The contents depend on the request. // If unused they must be passed as zero. uint32_t data32; uint64_t data64; } trace_provider_packet_t;
The following packets are defined:
TRACE_PROVIDER_STARTED
Sent from trace providers to the trace manager. Notify the trace manager that the provider has received the “start tracing” request and is starting to collect trace data. The data32 field of the packet contains the version number of the FIFO protocol that the provider is using. The value is specified by TRACE_PROVIDER_FIFO_PROTOCOL_VERSION in <trace-provider/provider.h>. If the trace manager sees a protocol it doesn't understand it will close its side of the FIFO and ignore all trace data from the provider.
TRACE_PROVIDER_SAVE_BUFFER
Sent from trace providers to the trace manager in streaming mode. Notify the trace manager that a buffer is full and needs saving. This request is only used in streaming mode. The data32 field contains the “wrap count” which is the number of times writing has switched from one buffer to the next. The buffer that needs saving is (data32 & 1). The data64 field contains the offset of the end of data written to the “durable” buffer.
Only one buffer save request may be sent at a time. The next one cannot be sent until TRACE_PROVIDER_BUFFER_SAVED is received acknowledging the previous request.
TRACE_PROVIDER_BUFFER_SAVED
Sent from the trace manager to trace providers in streaming mode. Notify the trace provider that the requested buffer has been saved. The data32 and data64 fields must have the same values from the originating TRACE_PROVIDER_SAVE_BUFFER request.