opcontrol(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPTIONS (specific to Xen) | OPTIONS (specific to System z) | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | VERSION | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

OPCONTROL(1)             General Commands Manual            OPCONTROL(1)

NAME         top

       opcontrol - control OProfile profiling

SYNOPSIS         top

       opcontrol [ options ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       opcontrol can be used to start profiling, end a profiling
       session, dump profile data, and set up the profiling parameters.

OPTIONS         top

       --help / -?
              Show help message.

       --version / -v
              Show version.

       --list-events / -l
              Shows the monitorable events.

       --init Load the OProfile module if required and make the OProfile
              driver interface available.

       --setup
              Followed by list options for profiling setup. Store setup
              in ~root/.oprofile/daemonrc. Optional.

       --status
              Show configuration information.

       --start-daemon
              Start the oprofile daemon without starting profiling.

       --start / -s
              Start data collection with either arguments provided by
              --setup or with information saved in
              ~root/.oprofile/daemonrc.

       --dump / -d
              Force a flush of the collected profiling data to the
              daemon.

       --stop / -t
              Stop data collection.

       --shutdown / -h
              Stop data collection and kill the daemon.

       --reset
              Clear out data from current session, but leaves saved
              sessions.

       --save=sessionname
              Save data from current session to sessionname.

       --deinit
              Shut down daemon. Unload the oprofile module and
              oprofilefs.

       --session-dir=dir_path
              Use sample database out of directory dir_path instead of
              the default location (/var/lib/oprofile).

       --buffer-size=num
              Set kernel buffer to num samples. The buffer watershed
              needs to be tweaked when changing this value.  Rules:  A
              non-zero value goes into effect after a '--shutdown/start'
              sequence.  A value of zero sets this parameter back to
              default value, but does not go into effect until after
              '--deinit/init' sequence.

       --buffer-watershed=num
              Set kernel buffer watershed to num samples. When buffer-
              size - buffer-watershed free entries remain in the kernel
              buffer, data will be flushed to the daemon.  Most useful
              values are in the range [0.25 - 0.5] * buffer-size.  Same
              rules as defined for buffer-size.

       --cpu-buffer-size=num
              Set kernel per-cpu buffer to num samples. If you profile
              at high rate it can help to increase this if the log file
              show excessive count of sample lost cpu buffer overflow.
              Same rules as defined for buffer-size.

       --event / -e [event|"default"]
              Specify an event to measure for the hardware performance
              counters, or "default" for the default event. The event is
              of the form "CPU_CLK_UNHALTED:30000:0:1:1" where the
              numeric values are count, unit mask, kernel-space
              counting, user-space counting, respectively.  Note that
              this over-rides all previous events selected; if you want
              to profile with two or more events simultaneously, you
              must specify them on the same opcontrol invocation. You
              can specify unit mask values using either a numerical
              value (hex values must begin with "0x") or a symbolic name
              (if the name=<um_name> field is shown in the ophelp
              output). For some named unit masks, the hex value is not
              unique; thus, OProfile tools enforce specifying such unit
              masks value by name.

       --separate / -p [none,lib,kernel,thread,cpu,all]
              Separate samples based on the given separator. 'lib'
              separates dynamically linked library samples per
              application. 'kernel' separates kernel and kernel module
              samples per application; 'kernel' implies 'library'.
              'thread' gives separation for each thread and task.  'cpu'
              separates for each CPU. 'all' implies all of the above
              options and 'none' turns off separation.

       --callgraph / -c [#depth]
              Enable callgraph sample collection with a maximum depth.
              Use 0 to disable callgraph profiling. This option is
              available on x86 using a 2.6+ kernel with callgraph
              support enabled.  It is also available on PowerPC using a
              2.6.17+ kernel.

       --image / -i [name,name...|"all"]
              Only profile the given absolute paths to binaries, or
              "all" to profile everything (the default).

       --vmlinux=file
              vmlinux kernel image.

       --no-vmlinux
              Use this when you don't have a kernel vmlinux file, and
              you don't want to profile the kernel.

       --verbose / -V [options]
              Be verbose in the daemon log. This has a high overhead.

       --kernel-range=start,end
              Set kernel range vma address in hexadecimal.

OPTIONS (specific to Xen)         top

       --xen=file
              Xen image

       --active-domains=<list>
              List of domain ids participating in a multi-domain
              profiling session. If more than one domain is specified in
              <list> they should be separated using commas. This option
              can only be used in domain 0 which is the only domain that
              can coordinate a multi-domain profiling session. Including
              domain 0 in the list of active domains is optional. (e.g.
              --active-domains=2,5,6 and --active-domains=0,2,5,6 are
              equivalent)

OPTIONS (specific to System z)         top

       --s390hwsampbufsize=num
              Number of 2MB areas used per CPU for storing sample data.
              The best size for the sample memory depends on the
              particular system and the workload to be measured.
              Providing the sampler with too little memory results in
              lost samples. Reserving too much system memory for the
              sampler impacts the overall performance and, hence, also
              the workload to be measured.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       No special environment variables are recognised by opcontrol.

FILES         top

       /root/.oprofile/daemonrc
              Configuration file for opcontrol

       /var/lib/oprofile/samples/
              The location of the generated sample files.

VERSION         top

       This man page is current for oprofile-1.0.0git.

SEE ALSO         top

       /usr/local/share/doc/oprofile/, oprofile(1)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the oprofile (a system-wide profiler for
       Linux) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/news/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/bugs/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git clone
       git://git.code.sf.net/p/oprofile/oprofile⟩ on 2021-08-27.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2021-03-10.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

4th Berkeley Distribution   Sun 20 July 2014                OPCONTROL(1)