linux-stable/Documentation/basic_profiling.txt
Linus Torvalds 1da177e4c3 Linux-2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.

Let it rip!
2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00

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These instructions are deliberately very basic. If you want something clever,
go read the real docs ;-) Please don't add more stuff, but feel free to
correct my mistakes ;-) (mbligh@aracnet.com)
Thanks to John Levon, Dave Hansen, et al. for help writing this.
<test> is the thing you're trying to measure.
Make sure you have the correct System.map / vmlinux referenced!
It is probably easiest to use "make install" for linux and hack
/sbin/installkernel to copy vmlinux to /boot, in addition to vmlinuz,
config, System.map, which are usually installed by default.
Readprofile
-----------
A recent readprofile command is needed for 2.6, such as found in util-linux
2.12a, which can be downloaded from:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/
Most distributions will ship it already.
Add "profile=2" to the kernel command line.
clear readprofile -r
<test>
dump output readprofile -m /boot/System.map > captured_profile
Oprofile
--------
Get the source (I use 0.8) from http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/
and add "idle=poll" to the kernel command line
Configure with CONFIG_PROFILING=y and CONFIG_OPROFILE=y & reboot on new kernel
./configure --with-kernel-support
make install
For superior results, be sure to enable the local APIC. If opreport sees
a 0Hz CPU, APIC was not on. Be aware that idle=poll may mean a performance
penalty.
One time setup:
opcontrol --setup --vmlinux=/boot/vmlinux
clear opcontrol --reset
start opcontrol --start
<test>
stop opcontrol --stop
dump output opreport > output_file
To only report on the kernel, run opreport /boot/vmlinux > output_file
A reset is needed to clear old statistics, which survive a reboot.