Debugging a flaky test with BCC's `trace`
2025-04-13
While patching an open-source project, the author encountered intermittently failing tests. Using the `trace` utility from the BCC tools, kernel function calls of `touch_atime` were monitored. This revealed a background thread in the author's text editor, scanning project files and altering file access times, thus causing the erratic test failures. The case highlights the power of BCC tools for Linux kernel debugging and the value of deep system understanding.