sp9sss proudly presents ronprobes for plan9 pc/ronprobes contains userland bits which can be used to test the stuff without killing your kernel, and to print the offset defines of struct Probe for use in probe.s (it knows many many fields of it) extract somewhere, bind -bc over your /sys/src/9/pc and /sys/src/9/port or which ever is your favourite way of doing it. try to compile, figure out what went wrong, compile, retry, compile, retry, install and boot new kernel, and then... theory of operation: replace function start with jmp to magic handler, magic handler calls a hook, puts back the original function start, mangles the stack to force magic exit handler to be called when the probed function returns, and the magic exit handler again calls a hook and puts back the magic function start replacement. mp safe: i don't even want to think about it. up safe: probably not. usage: too difficult. but you get an adventure instead term% bind -a '#+' /dev term% cat /dev/probectl probehits 0 term% nm $home/src/9/pc/9pcf | grep allocb f01b25df t _allocb f01b2682 T allocb f01667b2 t gc82543allocb f01b2713 T iallocb term% term% echo probe 0xf01b2682 new > /dev/probectl term% cat /dev/probectl probe 0xf01b2682 off probehits 0 term% cat /dev/probe & term% echo probe 0xf01b2682 on > /dev/probectl term% 0xf01b2682 1536 0xf01b2682 1536 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1536 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1536 0xf01b2682 1280 0xf01b2682 1280 .... meanwhile on another window: term% bind -a '#+' /dev term% cat /dev/probectl probe 0xf01b2682 on probehits 151784 term% cat /dev/probectl probe 0xf01b2682 on probehits 163663 term% cat /dev/probectl probe 0xf01b2682 on probehits 321111 term% echo probe 0xf01b2682 off > /dev/probectl at this point, the crazy scrolling should immediatelly stop on the other window. that's it. enabling/disabling the probe is not safe for now. we probably could have that by use of cmpxchg8. on SMP the problem is "slightly" difficult if cmpxchg8 doesn't cut it. anyway, the window of opportunity is small, so, for now, have fun with your new probes.