Open Source Summit + ELC North America 2019

Jitterdebugger is a new tool for testing the preempt_rt real-time extensions for the Linux kernel. While the basic principles for this endeavor (run a cyclic task on one or more CPUs, and store the measured latencies) seem very straightforward at a first glance, the devil is in the details -- in particular, if evaluations beyond computing simple descriptive results should take place, and if machines and systems are subjected to systematic testing over long periods of time.

The talk starts with an introduction to architecture and usage of the jitterdebugger tool, and will (of course) also address the question of how it differs from the cyclictest tool suite. We will then discuss archival strategies for keeping recorded data reproducible in the long run (a non-trivial problem!), and discuss several types of statistical evaluation that are made possible by jitterdebugger's new capabilities.