SystemTap print statements from "embedded C" functions.

SystemTap provides a flexible programming language to prototype debugging scripts very quickly.  Sometimes however, one has to use "embedded C" functions in a SystemTap script to interface more deeply with the kernel. 

Today I was writing a script to dump out ACPI object names and required some embedded C in my SystemTap script to walk the ACPI namespace and this required a C callback function.   However, inside the C callback I wanted to print the handle and name of the ACPI object but couldn't figure out how to use the native SystemTap print() functions from within embedded C code.    So I crufted up a simple "HelloWorld" SystemTap script and ran it with -k to keep the temporary sources and then had a look at the automagically generated code.

It appears that SystemTap converts the script print statements into _stp_printf()  C calls, so I just plugged these into my C callback instead of using printk().  Now my output goes via the underlying SystemTap print mechanism and appears on the tty rather than going to the kernel log.  Bit of a hack, but the result is easy to use.  I wish it was documented though.

Here is a sample of the original script to illustrate the point:

 %{  
 #include <acpi/acpi.h>  
   
 static acpi_status dump_name(acpi_handle handle, u32 lvl, void *context, void **rv)  
 {  
     struct acpi_buffer buffer = {ACPI_ALLOCATE_BUFFER};  
     int *count = (int*)context;  
   
     if (!ACPI_FAILURE(acpi_get_name(handle, ACPI_FULL_PATHNAME, &buffer))) {  
         _stp_printf(" %lx %s\n", handle, (char*)buffer.pointer);  
         kfree(buffer.pointer);  
         (*count)++;  
     }  
     return AE_OK;  
 }  
   
 ...  
 %}