Evaluation of a Minimal POSIX Tracing Service Profile for Real Time Embedded Systems

Pablo Parra, Aitor Viana, Martin Knoblauch, Cesar Rodriguez Ortega, Oscar R. Polo and Sebastian Sanchez

Workshop on Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time applications (OSPERT 2008)
Prague, Czech Republic, July 1 2008

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Summary

In this paper we propose the definition of a minimal tracing service profile for the POSIX tracing standard, suitable for embedded platforms, that comprises the most important primitives of the whole POSIX standard and covers two more key points. The first point is introduced to overcome the limitation of the current POSIX trace system that does not address the need for eventually peeking at the trace in LIFO mode, which could facilitate the remote maintenance of embedded systems that lack, among other resources, of a file system. The second point is the definition of a mechanism for managing different levels of trace information that are not included in the standard. The proposal is completed with the specification of a set of implementation requirements to ensure that the tracing system, with a minimal and deterministic intrusion, is capable of covering both the continuous tracing required during testing and validation phases and also the remote diagnosis during system lifetime. Finally, we present the results obtained with the implementation of this proposal over ERCOS-RT, a minimal real-time operating system developed for space systems and applications.

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