ftrace-seminar-paper

A seminar paper explaining ftrace and how to use it for understanding linux kernel internals, illustrated at tracing the way of a TCP packet through the kernel

Purpose

The main goal of this seminar paper is to help aspiring linux kernel developers undersanding the kernel by:

1. Explaining a tool to understand and trace what's happening inside the kernel (ftrace)
2. Giving an (rough) overview of tcp networking and the involved functions. (This also serves as example for 1.)

Overview

The main contents are:

• Explaining tracing
• Short guide to ftrace and trace-cmd
• Describing a concrete Experiment, tracing the way of data through the kernel
• Presentation of the results
• Explanation and discussion of the trace data.