# libtracefs(3) Manual Page

## NAME

tracefs_event_systems, tracefs_system_events, tracefs_event_enable, tracefs_event_disable, tracefs_event_is_enabled - Work with trace systems and events.

## SYNOPSIS

    #include <tracefs.h>

    enum tracefs_event_state {
            TRACEFS_ERROR = -1,
            TRACEFS_ALL_DISABLED = 0,
            TRACEFS_ALL_ENABLED = 1,
            TRACEFS_SOME_ENABLED = 2,
    };

    char **tracefs_event_systems(const char *tracing_dir);
    char **tracefs_system_events(const char *tracing_dir, const char *system);
    int tracefs_event_enable(struct tracefs_instance *instance, const char *system,
                               const char *event);
    int tracefs_event_disable(struct tracefs_instance *instance, const char *system,
                                const char *event);
    enum tracefs_enable_state tracefs_event_is_enabled(struct tracefs_instance *instance,
                             const char *system, const char *event);

## DESCRIPTION

Trace systems and events related APIs.

The tracefs_event_systems() function returns array of strings with the names of all registered trace systems, located in the given tracing_dir directory. This could be NULL or the location of the tracefs mount point for the trace systems of the local machine, or it may be a path to a copy of the tracefs directory from another machine. The last entry in the array is a NULL pointer. The array must be freed with tracefs_list_free() API.

The tracefs_system_events() function returns array of strings with the names of all registered trace events for given trace system specified by system, located in the given tracing_dir directory. This could be NULL or the location of the tracefs mount point for the trace systems of the local machine, or it may be a path to a copy of the tracefs directory from another machine. The last entry in the array as a NULL pointer. The array must be freed with tracefs_list_free() API.

The tracefs_event_enable() function enables a given event based on the system and event passed in for the given instance. If instance is NULL, then the top level tracing directory is used. If system and event are both NULL, then all events are enabled for the instance. If event is NULL then all events within the system are enabled. If system is NULL, then all systems are searched and any event within a system that matches event is enabled. Both system and event may be regular expressions as defined by regex(3).

The tracefs_event_disable() function disables the events that match the system and event parameters for the given instance. What events are disable follow the same rules as tracefs_event_enable() for matching events. That is, if instance is NULL, then the top level tracing directory is used. If both system and event are NULL then all events are disabled for the given instance, and so on.

The tracefs_event_is_enabled() returns if an event is enabled, a set of events are enabled, a system is enabled, or all events are enabled. If both system and event are NULL, then it returns the enable state of all events. If system is not NULL and event is NULL, then it will check if all the events in all the systems that system and return the enable state of those events. If system is NULL and event is not NULL, then it will match all the events in all systems that match event and return their enabled state. If both system and event are not NULL, then it will return the enabled state of all matching events. The enabled state is defined as:

TRACEFS_ERROR - An error occurred including no event were matched.

TRACEFS_ALL_DISABLED - All matching events are disabled.

TRACEFS_ALL_ENABLED - All matching events are enabled.

TRACEFS_SOME_ENABLED - Some matching events were enabled while others were not.

## RETURN VALUE

The tracefs_event_systems() and tracefs_system_events() functions return an array of strings. The last element in that array is a NULL pointer. The array must be freed with tracefs_list_free() API. In case of an error, NULL is returned.

Both tracefs_event_enable() and tracefs_event_disable() return 0 if they found any matching events (Note it does not check the previous status of the event. If tracefs_event_enable() finds an event that is already enabled, and there are no other errors, then it will return 0). If an error occurs, even if other events were found, it will return -1 and errno will be set. If no errors occur, but no events are found that match the system and event parameters, then -1 is returned and errno is not set.

The tracefs_event_is_enabled() returns the enabled status of the matching events or TRACEFS_ERROR on error.

## EXAMPLE

## FILES

    tracefs.h
            Header file to include in order to have access to the library APIs.
    -ltracefs
            Linker switch to add when building a program that uses the library.

## SEE ALSO

libtracefs(3), libtraceevent(3), trace-cmd(1)

## AUTHOR

    Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
    Tzvetomir Stoyanov <tz.stoyanov@gmail.com>

## REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to <linux-trace-devel@vger.kernel.org>

## LICENSE

libtracefs is Free Software licensed under the GNU LGPL 2.1

## RESOURCES

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libtrace/libtracefs.git/

## COPYING

Copyright (C) 2020 VMware, Inc. Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).