Info Predefined Probe

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Info Probe: info.ual

The info.ual predefined probe provides the user with the general information available about the program. It can be used on an executable before the program is run, or with apformat to see additional information about the program after it was run.

The most common use of this probe is to get the names of the target program's entry points for which one can define a probe. Without using this probe, it is sometimes difficult to come up with the exact name of the function, that would be understood by Aprobe. Using this probe ensures that the one refers to target functions by the same name as does Aprobe.

Using info.ual directly with aprobe is made unnecessary by the apinfo and apsymbols commands (see apinfo and apsymbols). These are scripts which pass invoke aprobe using info.ual and simplify the handling of the parameters and other files.

Another important use of this probe is at format time to get the names of all the UAL files that were used to collect the data at runtime. This is especially useful in lab environments where the multiple users may be collecting different data using different UALs on the same executable at the same time.

Usage

info.ual is specified on the aprobe or apformat command line. The specific options are:

aprobe -u info.ual [-p " param_list "] executable apformat -u info.ual [-p  " param_list " ] apd_file

where param_list may include:

-a
Prints all information.
-d
Print data symbols from application module.
-da
Print data symbols from all modules.
-h
Prints options.
-l
Prints instrumentable lines for each function symbol shown.
-m
Prints the list of modules and their checksums.
-s
Prints function names from the application module.
-sa
Prints function names from all modules.
-t
Prints the list of threads (format-time only)
-u
Prints the list of UALs used at runtime (format-time only)
'-x'
Indicate functions that are not instrumentable.
'-xb'
Exclude listing functions that are not instrumentable.
'-xg'
Exclude listing functions that are instrumentable.

For example, the command

aprobe -u info.ual -p "-s" a.out

Provides the same output as the command "apsymbols a.out".

If one doesn't know what UALs were used in data collection at runtime, he can get this information with the following command:

apformat -u info.ual -p "-u" a.apd