Can someone experienced with SystemTap or dtrace4linux comment on why these tools aren't more popular among Linux professionals?
I recently had to debug a memory usage issue at work, and SystemTap seemed like it would be a lifesaver in those and many other occasions. Unfortunately, both myself and my coworkers were inexperienced with it and there wasn't much documentation about it online, so we ended up using a standard profiler to track down the issue, which turned out to be a much slower process.
It's a complex question. For really advanced environments, advanced tools are in use (including ftrace, BPF, etc). If you mean more widespread usage, then there's the need for documentation, marketing, etc. Linux doesn't really have anyone focused on doing that (ie, marketing departments with large budgets).
> and there wasn't much documentation about it online, so we ended up using a standard profiler to track down the issue
I think you hit the nail on the head right there. Also I think SystemTap requires a certain kernel version or above and some enterprise systems are still stuck at RHEL 6.5.
I recently had to debug a memory usage issue at work, and SystemTap seemed like it would be a lifesaver in those and many other occasions. Unfortunately, both myself and my coworkers were inexperienced with it and there wasn't much documentation about it online, so we ended up using a standard profiler to track down the issue, which turned out to be a much slower process.