NAME
oprofile − a system-wide profiler
SYNOPSIS
opcontrol
[ options ]
opreport [ options ] [ profile specification ]
opannotate [ options ] [ profile specification ]
oparchive [ options ] [ profile specification ]
opgprof [ options ] [ profile specification ]
DESCRIPTION
OProfile is a
profiling system for systems running Linux 2.2, 2.4, and
2.6. Profiling runs transparently in the background and
profile data can be collected at any time. OProfile makes
use of the hardware performance counters provided on Intel,
AMD, and other processors, and uses a timer-interrupt based
mechanism on CPUs without counters. OProfile can profile the
whole system in high detail.
For a gentle guide to using OProfile, please read the HTML
documentation listed in SEE ALSO.
OPCONTROL
opcontrol is used for starting and stopping the OProfile daemon, and providing set-up parameters.
OPREPORT
opreport gives image and symbol-based profile summaries for the whole system or a subset of binary images.
OPANNOTATE
opannotate can produce annotated source or mixed source and assembly output.
OPARCHIVE
oparchive produces oprofile archive for offline analysis
OPGPROF
opgprof can produce a gprof-format profile for a single binary.
PROFILE SPECIFICATIONS
All of the
post-profiling tools can take profile specifications, which
is some combination of the following parameters. Enclosing
part of a profile specification in curly braces { } can be
used for differential profiles with opreport ; the
braces must be surrounded by whitespace.
archive:archive
Path to the archive to inspect, as generated by oparchive
session:sessionlist
A comma-separated list of session names to resolve in. Absence of this tag, unlike all others, means "the current session", equivalent to specifying "session:current".
session-exclude:sessionlist
A comma-separated list of sessions to exclude.
image:imagelist
A comma-separated list of image names to resolve. Each entry may be relative path, glob-style name, or full path, e.g. opreport ’image:/usr/bin/oprofiled,*op*,./oprofpp’
image-exclude:imagelist
Same as image:, but the matching images are excluded.
lib-image:imagelist
Same as image:, but only for images that are for a particular primary binary image (namely, an application). This only makes sense to use if you’re using --separate. This includes kernel modules and the kernel when using --separate=kernel.
lib-image-exclude:imagelist
Same as <option>lib-image:</option>, but the matching images are excluded.
event:eventname
The symbolic event name to match on, e.g. event:DATA_MEM_REFS.
count:eventcount
The event count to match on, e.g. event:DATA_MEM_REFS count:30000.
unit-mask:maskvalue
The unit mask value of the event to match on, e.g. unit-mask:1.
cpu:cpulist
Only consider profiles for the given numbered CPU (starting from zero). This is only useful when using CPU profile separation.
tgid:pidlist
Only consider profiles for the given task groups. Unless some program is using threads, the task group ID of a process is the same as its process ID. This option corresponds to the POSIX notion of a thread group. This is only useful when using per-process profile separation.
tid:tidlist
Only consider profiles for the given threads. When using recent thread libraries, all threads in a process share the same task group ID, but have different thread IDs. You can use this option in combination with tgid: to restrict the results to particular threads within a process. This is only useful when using per-process profile separation.
ENVIRONMENT
No special environment variables are recognised by oprofile.
FILES
$HOME/.oprofile/
Configuration files
/root/.oprofile/daemonrc
Configuration file for opcontrol
/usr/share/oprofile/
Event description files used by OProfile.
/var/lib/oprofile/samples/oprofiled.log
The user-space daemon logfile.
/var/lib/oprofile/opdev,
/var/lib/oprofile/ophashmapdev,
/var/lib/oprofile/opnotedev
The device files for communication with the Linux 2.4 kernel module.
/dev/oprofile
The device filesystem for communication with the Linux 2.6 kernel module.
/var/lib/oprofile/samples/
The location of the generated sample files.
VERSION
This man page is current for oprofile-0.9.6.
SEE ALSO
/usr/share/doc/oprofile/, opcontrol(1), opreport(1), opannotate(1), oparchive(1), opgprof(1), gprof(1), readprofile(1), CPU vendor architecture manuals
COPYRIGHT
oprofile is Copyright (C) 1998-2004 University of Manchester, UK, John Levon, and others. OProfile is released under the GNU General Public License, Version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
AUTHORS
John Levon <levon [AT] movementarian.org> is the primary author. See the documentation for other contributors.