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authorChangbin Du <changbin.du@intel.com>2018-02-17 08:39:37 +0300
committerJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>2018-03-07 20:23:06 +0300
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tree171aeabff773c8398647f0f133ee510ce9fec920 /Documentation/trace/tracepoint-analysis.txt
parentb3fdd1f92c1a12b2feda08fcad8ef29a40759bd2 (diff)
downloadlinux-8fa4e720e8d919271cdf0da3c0856333246398a4.tar.xz
trace doc: convert trace/tracepoint-analysis.txt to rst format
This converts the plain text documentation to reStructuredText format and add it into Sphinx TOC tree. No essential content change. Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Signed-off-by: Changbin Du <changbin.du@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
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- Notes on Analysing Behaviour Using Events and Tracepoints
-
- Documentation written by Mel Gorman
- PCL information heavily based on email from Ingo Molnar
-
-1. Introduction
-===============
-
-Tracepoints (see Documentation/trace/tracepoints.txt) can be used without
-creating custom kernel modules to register probe functions using the event
-tracing infrastructure.
-
-Simplistically, tracepoints represent important events that can be
-taken in conjunction with other tracepoints to build a "Big Picture" of
-what is going on within the system. There are a large number of methods for
-gathering and interpreting these events. Lacking any current Best Practises,
-this document describes some of the methods that can be used.
-
-This document assumes that debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug and that
-the appropriate tracing options have been configured into the kernel. It is
-assumed that the PCL tool tools/perf has been installed and is in your path.
-
-2. Listing Available Events
-===========================
-
-2.1 Standard Utilities
-----------------------
-
-All possible events are visible from /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events. Simply
-calling
-
- $ find /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events -type d
-
-will give a fair indication of the number of events available.
-
-2.2 PCL (Performance Counters for Linux)
--------
-
-Discovery and enumeration of all counters and events, including tracepoints,
-are available with the perf tool. Getting a list of available events is a
-simple case of:
-
- $ perf list 2>&1 | grep Tracepoint
- ext4:ext4_free_inode [Tracepoint event]
- ext4:ext4_request_inode [Tracepoint event]
- ext4:ext4_allocate_inode [Tracepoint event]
- ext4:ext4_write_begin [Tracepoint event]
- ext4:ext4_ordered_write_end [Tracepoint event]
- [ .... remaining output snipped .... ]
-
-
-3. Enabling Events
-==================
-
-3.1 System-Wide Event Enabling
-------------------------------
-
-See Documentation/trace/events.txt for a proper description on how events
-can be enabled system-wide. A short example of enabling all events related
-to page allocation would look something like:
-
- $ for i in `find /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events -name "enable" | grep mm_`; do echo 1 > $i; done
-
-3.2 System-Wide Event Enabling with SystemTap
----------------------------------------------
-
-In SystemTap, tracepoints are accessible using the kernel.trace() function
-call. The following is an example that reports every 5 seconds what processes
-were allocating the pages.
-
- global page_allocs
-
- probe kernel.trace("mm_page_alloc") {
- page_allocs[execname()]++
- }
-
- function print_count() {
- printf ("%-25s %-s\n", "#Pages Allocated", "Process Name")
- foreach (proc in page_allocs-)
- printf("%-25d %s\n", page_allocs[proc], proc)
- printf ("\n")
- delete page_allocs
- }
-
- probe timer.s(5) {
- print_count()
- }
-
-3.3 System-Wide Event Enabling with PCL
----------------------------------------
-
-By specifying the -a switch and analysing sleep, the system-wide events
-for a duration of time can be examined.
-
- $ perf stat -a \
- -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free \
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched \
- sleep 10
- Performance counter stats for 'sleep 10':
-
- 9630 kmem:mm_page_alloc
- 2143 kmem:mm_page_free
- 7424 kmem:mm_page_free_batched
-
- 10.002577764 seconds time elapsed
-
-Similarly, one could execute a shell and exit it as desired to get a report
-at that point.
-
-3.4 Local Event Enabling
-------------------------
-
-Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt describes how to enable events on a per-thread
-basis using set_ftrace_pid.
-
-3.5 Local Event Enablement with PCL
------------------------------------
-
-Events can be activated and tracked for the duration of a process on a local
-basis using PCL such as follows.
-
- $ perf stat -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free \
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched ./hackbench 10
- Time: 0.909
-
- Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10':
-
- 17803 kmem:mm_page_alloc
- 12398 kmem:mm_page_free
- 4827 kmem:mm_page_free_batched
-
- 0.973913387 seconds time elapsed
-
-4. Event Filtering
-==================
-
-Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt covers in-depth how to filter events in
-ftrace. Obviously using grep and awk of trace_pipe is an option as well
-as any script reading trace_pipe.
-
-5. Analysing Event Variances with PCL
-=====================================
-
-Any workload can exhibit variances between runs and it can be important
-to know what the standard deviation is. By and large, this is left to the
-performance analyst to do it by hand. In the event that the discrete event
-occurrences are useful to the performance analyst, then perf can be used.
-
- $ perf stat --repeat 5 -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched ./hackbench 10
- Time: 0.890
- Time: 0.895
- Time: 0.915
- Time: 1.001
- Time: 0.899
-
- Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10' (5 runs):
-
- 16630 kmem:mm_page_alloc ( +- 3.542% )
- 11486 kmem:mm_page_free ( +- 4.771% )
- 4730 kmem:mm_page_free_batched ( +- 2.325% )
-
- 0.982653002 seconds time elapsed ( +- 1.448% )
-
-In the event that some higher-level event is required that depends on some
-aggregation of discrete events, then a script would need to be developed.
-
-Using --repeat, it is also possible to view how events are fluctuating over
-time on a system-wide basis using -a and sleep.
-
- $ perf stat -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free \
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched \
- -a --repeat 10 \
- sleep 1
- Performance counter stats for 'sleep 1' (10 runs):
-
- 1066 kmem:mm_page_alloc ( +- 26.148% )
- 182 kmem:mm_page_free ( +- 5.464% )
- 890 kmem:mm_page_free_batched ( +- 30.079% )
-
- 1.002251757 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.005% )
-
-6. Higher-Level Analysis with Helper Scripts
-============================================
-
-When events are enabled the events that are triggering can be read from
-/sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe in human-readable format although binary
-options exist as well. By post-processing the output, further information can
-be gathered on-line as appropriate. Examples of post-processing might include
-
- o Reading information from /proc for the PID that triggered the event
- o Deriving a higher-level event from a series of lower-level events.
- o Calculating latencies between two events
-
-Documentation/trace/postprocess/trace-pagealloc-postprocess.pl is an example
-script that can read trace_pipe from STDIN or a copy of a trace. When used
-on-line, it can be interrupted once to generate a report without exiting
-and twice to exit.
-
-Simplistically, the script just reads STDIN and counts up events but it
-also can do more such as
-
- o Derive high-level events from many low-level events. If a number of pages
- are freed to the main allocator from the per-CPU lists, it recognises
- that as one per-CPU drain even though there is no specific tracepoint
- for that event
- o It can aggregate based on PID or individual process number
- o In the event memory is getting externally fragmented, it reports
- on whether the fragmentation event was severe or moderate.
- o When receiving an event about a PID, it can record who the parent was so
- that if large numbers of events are coming from very short-lived
- processes, the parent process responsible for creating all the helpers
- can be identified
-
-7. Lower-Level Analysis with PCL
-================================
-
-There may also be a requirement to identify what functions within a program
-were generating events within the kernel. To begin this sort of analysis, the
-data must be recorded. At the time of writing, this required root:
-
- $ perf record -c 1 \
- -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free \
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched \
- ./hackbench 10
- Time: 0.894
- [ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.733 MB perf.data (~32010 samples) ]
-
-Note the use of '-c 1' to set the event period to sample. The default sample
-period is quite high to minimise overhead but the information collected can be
-very coarse as a result.
-
-This record outputted a file called perf.data which can be analysed using
-perf report.
-
- $ perf report
- # Samples: 30922
- #
- # Overhead Command Shared Object
- # ........ ......... ................................
- #
- 87.27% hackbench [vdso]
- 6.85% hackbench /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
- 2.62% hackbench /lib/ld-2.9.so
- 1.52% perf [vdso]
- 1.22% hackbench ./hackbench
- 0.48% hackbench [kernel]
- 0.02% perf /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
- 0.01% perf /usr/bin/perf
- 0.01% perf /lib/ld-2.9.so
- 0.00% hackbench /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.9.so
- #
- # (For more details, try: perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol)
- #
-
-According to this, the vast majority of events triggered on events
-within the VDSO. With simple binaries, this will often be the case so let's
-take a slightly different example. In the course of writing this, it was
-noticed that X was generating an insane amount of page allocations so let's look
-at it:
-
- $ perf record -c 1 -f \
- -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free \
- -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched \
- -p `pidof X`
-
-This was interrupted after a few seconds and
-
- $ perf report
- # Samples: 27666
- #
- # Overhead Command Shared Object
- # ........ ....... .......................................
- #
- 51.95% Xorg [vdso]
- 47.95% Xorg /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1
- 0.09% Xorg /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
- 0.01% Xorg [kernel]
- #
- # (For more details, try: perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol)
- #
-
-So, almost half of the events are occurring in a library. To get an idea which
-symbol:
-
- $ perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol
- # Samples: 27666
- #
- # Overhead Command Shared Object Symbol
- # ........ ....... ....................................... ......
- #
- 51.95% Xorg [vdso] [.] 0x000000ffffe424
- 47.93% Xorg /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1 [.] pixmanFillsse2
- 0.09% Xorg /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so [.] _int_malloc
- 0.01% Xorg /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1 [.] pixman_region32_copy_f
- 0.01% Xorg [kernel] [k] read_hpet
- 0.01% Xorg /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1 [.] get_fast_path
- 0.00% Xorg [kernel] [k] ftrace_trace_userstack
-
-To see where within the function pixmanFillsse2 things are going wrong:
-
- $ perf annotate pixmanFillsse2
- [ ... ]
- 0.00 : 34eeb: 0f 18 08 prefetcht0 (%eax)
- : }
- :
- : extern __inline void __attribute__((__gnu_inline__, __always_inline__, _
- : _mm_store_si128 (__m128i *__P, __m128i __B) : {
- : *__P = __B;
- 12.40 : 34eee: 66 0f 7f 80 40 ff ff movdqa %xmm0,-0xc0(%eax)
- 0.00 : 34ef5: ff
- 12.40 : 34ef6: 66 0f 7f 80 50 ff ff movdqa %xmm0,-0xb0(%eax)
- 0.00 : 34efd: ff
- 12.39 : 34efe: 66 0f 7f 80 60 ff ff movdqa %xmm0,-0xa0(%eax)
- 0.00 : 34f05: ff
- 12.67 : 34f06: 66 0f 7f 80 70 ff ff movdqa %xmm0,-0x90(%eax)
- 0.00 : 34f0d: ff
- 12.58 : 34f0e: 66 0f 7f 40 80 movdqa %xmm0,-0x80(%eax)
- 12.31 : 34f13: 66 0f 7f 40 90 movdqa %xmm0,-0x70(%eax)
- 12.40 : 34f18: 66 0f 7f 40 a0 movdqa %xmm0,-0x60(%eax)
- 12.31 : 34f1d: 66 0f 7f 40 b0 movdqa %xmm0,-0x50(%eax)
-
-At a glance, it looks like the time is being spent copying pixmaps to
-the card. Further investigation would be needed to determine why pixmaps
-are being copied around so much but a starting point would be to take an
-ancient build of libpixmap out of the library path where it was totally
-forgotten about from months ago!