<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd">
<book id="TapsetRef">
 <bookinfo>
  <title>SystemTap Tapset Reference Manual</title>
<!--starthere-->
  <copyright>
   <year>2008-2013</year>
   <holder>Red Hat, Inc. and others</holder>
  </copyright>

  <authorgroup>
   <author>
    <othername>SystemTap</othername>
    <contrib>Hackers</contrib>
   </author>
  </authorgroup>


 </bookinfo>
<!-- pls dont remove marker comments, as they are used in publican conversion-->
<toc/>
<chapter id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title><para>
    SystemTap provides free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the
    gathering of information about the running Linux system. This assists
    diagnosis of a performance or functional problem. SystemTap eliminates the
    need for the developer to go through the tedious and disruptive instrument,
    recompile, install, and reboot sequence that may be otherwise required to
    collect data.
  </para><para>
    SystemTap provides a simple command line interface and scripting language
    for writing instrumentation for a live running kernel. The instrumentation
    makes extensive use of the probe points and functions provided in the
    <firstterm>tapset</firstterm> library. This document describes the various
    probe points and functions.
  </para></chapter>
</book>
