error::process-tracking(7stap) — Linux manual page

WARNING::PROCESS-TRACKING(7stap)         WARNING::PROCESS-TRACKING(7stap)

NAME         top

       warning::process-tracking - process-tracking facilities are not
       available

DESCRIPTION         top

       These errors and warnings occur when the kernel systemtap is
       running on lacks support for user-space process tracking
       facilities.

   COMPILE-TIME ERROR
       The error

              ERROR: user-space process-tracking facilities not available

       occurs when the script contains a uprobes probe point that the
       current kernel does not support.

   RUNTIME WARNINGS
       The warning,

              WARNING: process-tracking facilities are not available in this kernel

       and the related message,

              WARNING: cannot track target in process '...'

       both occur at runtime when running on a kernel (generally an older
       version) that has neither utrace functionality nor an acceptable
       substitute.

       The script should still load and run. However, probes that rely on
       availability of process-tracking facilities will silently fail to
       trigger.

RESOLVING THE ISSUE         top

       If process-tracking functionality is absolutely necessary, either
       a kernel version newer than 3.5 is needed, or an older version
       must be compiled with appropriate utrace patches.

SEE ALSO         top

       stap(1),
       error::reporting(7stap)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemtap (a tracing and live-system
       analysis tool) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨https://sourceware.org/systemtap/⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to systemtap@sourceware.org.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://sourceware.org/git/systemtap.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-07-24.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

                                         WARNING::PROCESS-TRACKING(7stap)

HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH.