kernel-debugging-advanced

kernel-debugging-advanced is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills. It costs 78 tokens per session (920 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to tracing and investigating Linux kernel behavior with tools such as ftrace, trace-cmd, perf, kprobes, kgdb, and crash analysis. It covers both live tracing and analysis of a saved crash dump.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to trace driver and system calls, profile kernel work, inspect running systems, investigate panics, or analyze vmcore crash dumps.
Why use it?
It helps reveal where time is spent, which functions ran, and what led to a kernel failure. This is useful when ordinary logs do not explain latency spikes or crashes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to trace driver and system calls, profile kernel work, inspect running systems, investigate panics, or analyze vmcore crash dumps.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill kernel-debugging-advanced
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for kernel-debugging-advanced

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for kernel-debugging-advanced

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/kernel-debugging-advanced.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 78 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 920 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00078 $0.00920
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00460
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00184
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00092

Measured 8d ago against content hash 825dff21cf4c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

kernel-debugging-advanced scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/kernel-dev/kernel-debugging-advanced/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Advanced Kernel Debugging

Purpose

Extend skills/kernel/kernel-debugging with production-grade tracing: ftrace, trace-cmd, kernel perf, kprobes/kretprobes, kgdb, crash dump analysis, and printk discipline. Not merged with kernel-debugging — that skill covers baseline kgdb/dyndbg; this one focuses on trace-cmd, function_graph, and live/post-mortem production workflows.

When to Use

  • Latency spikes in kernel driver without obvious bug
  • Tracing function call graph in kernel
  • Live inspection without recompiling (kprobes, bpf)
  • Post-mortem vmcore after panic

Workflow

1. ftrace function graph

# Enable function graph tracer
echo function_graph > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer
echo my_driver_probe > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_graph_function
echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/tracing_on
# reproduce issue
cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace
echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/tracing_on

Requires CONFIG_FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER and debugfs mounted.

2. trace-cmd record

trace-cmd record -p function_graph -F my_probe
trace-cmd report
trace-cmd stat

Portable capture for sharing with others.

3. perf in kernel context

perf record -a -g -- sleep 10
perf report --stdio
perf probe --add my_driver:probe

See skills/profilers/linux-perf for userspace overlap.

4. kprobes (dynamic)

#include <linux/kprobes.h>

static struct kprobe kp = {
    .symbol_name = "do_sys_open",
    .pre_handler = handler,
};
register_kprobe(&kp);

Use sparingly in production; prefer static tracepoints when available.

5. dyndbg and printk discipline

echo 'module mydriver +p' > /sys/kernel/debug/dynamic_debug/control
echo 'file drivers/foo/*.c +p' > /sys/kernel/debug/dynamic_debug/control
pr_debug("state=%d\n", s);           /* compile-time optional */
printk_ratelimited(KERN_WARNING "hw fault\n");

6. kgdb / kdb

# kernel cmdline: kgdboc=ttyS0,115200 kgdbwait
echo g > /proc/sysrq-trigger   # break into debugger (when configured)

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 119 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A 825dff21cf4c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kernel-debugging-advanced is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills (203 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 920 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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