perf-trace(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | PAGEFAULTS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

PERF-TRACE(1)                  perf Manual                 PERF-TRACE(1)

NAME         top

       perf-trace - strace inspired tool

SYNOPSIS         top

       perf trace
       perf trace record

DESCRIPTION         top

       This command will show the events associated with the target,
       initially syscalls, but other system events like pagefaults, task
       lifetime events, scheduling events, etc.

       This is a live mode tool in addition to working with perf.data
       files like the other perf tools. Files can be generated using the
       perf record command but the session needs to include the
       raw_syscalls events (-e raw_syscalls:*). Alternatively, perf
       trace record can be used as a shortcut to automatically include
       the raw_syscalls events when writing events to a file.

       The following options apply to perf trace; options to perf trace
       record are found in the perf record man page.

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --all-cpus
           System-wide collection from all CPUs.

       -e, --expr, --event
           List of syscalls and other perf events (tracepoints, HW cache
           events, etc) to show. Globbing is supported, e.g.: "epoll_*",
           "msg", etc. See perf list for a complete list of events.
           Prefixing with ! shows all syscalls but the ones specified.
           You may need to escape it.

       --filter=<filter>
           Event filter. This option should follow an event selector
           (-e) which selects tracepoint event(s).

       -D msecs, --delay msecs
           After starting the program, wait msecs before measuring. This
           is useful to filter out the startup phase of the program,
           which is often very different.

       -o, --output=
           Output file name.

       -p, --pid=
           Record events on existing process ID (comma separated list).

       -t, --tid=
           Record events on existing thread ID (comma separated list).

       -u, --uid=
           Record events in threads owned by uid. Name or number.

       -G, --cgroup
           Record events in threads in a cgroup.

               Look for cgroups to set at the /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event directory, then
               remove the /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event/ part and try:

               perf trace -G A -e sched:*switch

               Will set all raw_syscalls:sys_{enter,exit}, pgfault, vfs_getname, etc
               _and_ sched:sched_switch to the 'A' cgroup, while:

               perf trace -e sched:*switch -G A

               will only set the sched:sched_switch event to the 'A' cgroup, all the
               other events (raw_syscalls:sys_{enter,exit}, etc are left "without"
               a cgroup (on the root cgroup, sys wide, etc).

               Multiple cgroups:

               perf trace -G A -e sched:*switch -G B

               the syscall ones go to the 'A' cgroup, the sched:sched_switch goes
               to the 'B' cgroup.

       --filter-pids=
           Filter out events for these pids and for trace itself (comma
           separated list).

       -v, --verbose
           Increase the verbosity level.

       --no-inherit
           Child tasks do not inherit counters.

       -m, --mmap-pages=
           Number of mmap data pages (must be a power of two) or size
           specification with appended unit character - B/K/M/G. The
           size is rounded up to have nearest pages power of two value.

       -C, --cpu
           Collect samples only on the list of CPUs provided. Multiple
           CPUs can be provided as a comma-separated list with no space:
           0,1. Ranges of CPUs are specified with -: 0-2. In per-thread
           mode with inheritance mode on (default), Events are captured
           only when the thread executes on the designated CPUs. Default
           is to monitor all CPUs.

       --duration
           Show only events that had a duration greater than N.M ms.

       --sched
           Accrue thread runtime and provide a summary at the end of the
           session.

       --failure
           Show only syscalls that failed, i.e. that returned < 0.

       -i, --input
           Process events from a given perf data file.

       -T, --time
           Print full timestamp rather time relative to first sample.

       --comm
           Show process COMM right beside its ID, on by default, disable
           with --no-comm.

       -s, --summary
           Show only a summary of syscalls by thread with min, max, and
           average times (in msec) and relative stddev.

       -S, --with-summary
           Show all syscalls followed by a summary by thread with min,
           max, and average times (in msec) and relative stddev.

       --errno-summary
           To be used with -s or -S, to show stats for the errnos
           experienced by syscalls, using only this option will trigger
           --summary.

       --tool_stats
           Show tool stats such as number of times fd→pathname was
           discovered thru hooking the open syscall return + vfs_getname
           or via reading /proc/pid/fd, etc.

       -f, --force
           Don’t complain, do it.

       -F=[all|min|maj], --pf=[all|min|maj]
           Trace pagefaults. Optionally, you can specify whether you
           want minor, major or all pagefaults. Default value is maj.

       --syscalls
           Trace system calls. This options is enabled by default,
           disable with --no-syscalls.

       --call-graph [mode,type,min[,limit],order[,key][,branch]]
           Setup and enable call-graph (stack chain/backtrace)
           recording. See --call-graph section in perf-record and
           perf-report man pages for details. The ones that are most
           useful in perf trace are dwarf and lbr, where available, try:
           perf trace --call-graph dwarf.

               Using this will, for the root user, bump the value of --mmap-pages to 4
               times the maximum for non-root users, based on the kernel.perf_event_mlock_kb
               sysctl. This is done only if the user doesn't specify a --mmap-pages value.

       --kernel-syscall-graph
           Show the kernel callchains on the syscall exit path.

       --max-events=N
           Stop after processing N events. Note that strace-like events
           are considered only at exit time or when a syscall is
           interrupted, i.e. in those cases this option is equivalent to
           the number of lines printed.

       --switch-on EVENT_NAME
           Only consider events after this event is found.

       --switch-off EVENT_NAME
           Stop considering events after this event is found.

       --show-on-off-events
           Show the --switch-on/off events too.

       --max-stack
           Set the stack depth limit when parsing the callchain,
           anything beyond the specified depth will be ignored. Note
           that at this point this is just about the presentation part,
           i.e. the kernel is still not limiting, the overhead of
           callchains needs to be set via the knobs in --call-graph
           dwarf.

               Implies '--call-graph dwarf' when --call-graph not present on the
               command line, on systems where DWARF unwinding was built in.

               Default: /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_max_stack when present for
                        live sessions (without --input/-i), 127 otherwise.

       --min-stack
           Set the stack depth limit when parsing the callchain,
           anything below the specified depth will be ignored. Disabled
           by default.

               Implies '--call-graph dwarf' when --call-graph not present on the
               command line, on systems where DWARF unwinding was built in.

       --print-sample
           Print the PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE PERF_SAMPLE_ info for the
           raw_syscalls:sys_{enter,exit} tracepoints, for debugging.

       --proc-map-timeout
           When processing pre-existing threads /proc/XXX/mmap, it may
           take a long time, because the file may be huge. A time out is
           needed in such cases. This option sets the time out limit.
           The default value is 500 ms.

       --sort-events
           Do sorting on batches of events, use when noticing out of
           order events that may happen, for instance, when a thread
           gets migrated to a different CPU while processing a syscall.

       --libtraceevent_print
           Use libtraceevent to print tracepoint arguments. By default
           perf trace uses the same beautifiers used in the strace-like
           enter+exit lines to augment the tracepoint arguments.

       --map-dump
           Dump BPF maps setup by events passed via -e, for instance the
           augmented_raw_syscalls living in
           tools/perf/examples/bpf/augmented_raw_syscalls.c. For now
           this dumps just boolean map values and integer keys, in time
           this will print in hex by default and use BTF when available,
           as well as use functions to do pretty printing using the
           existing perf trace syscall arg beautifiers to map integer
           arguments to strings (pid to comm, syscall id to syscall
           name, etc).

PAGEFAULTS         top

       When tracing pagefaults, the format of the trace is as follows:

       <min|maj>fault [<ip.symbol>+<ip.offset>] ⇒
       <addr.dso@addr.offset[1]> (<map type><addr level>).

       •   min/maj indicates whether fault event is minor or major;

       •   ip.symbol shows symbol for instruction pointer (the code that
           generated the fault); if no debug symbols available, perf
           trace will print raw IP;

       •   addr.dso shows DSO for the faulted address;

       •   map type is either d for non-executable maps or x for
           executable maps;

       •   addr level is either k for kernel dso or .  for user dso.

       For symbols resolution you may need to install debugging symbols.

       Please be aware that duration is currently always 0 and doesn’t
       reflect actual time it took for fault to be handled!

       When --verbose specified, perf trace tries to print all available
       information for both IP and fault address in the form of
       dso@symbol[2]+offset.

EXAMPLES         top

       Trace only major pagefaults:

           $ perf trace --no-syscalls -F

       Trace syscalls, major and minor pagefaults:

           $ perf trace -F all

           1416.547 ( 0.000 ms): python/20235 majfault [CRYPTO_push_info_+0x0] => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.0.0@0x61be0 (x.)

           As you can see, there was major pagefault in python process, from
           CRYPTO_push_info_ routine which faulted somewhere in libcrypto.so.

       Trace the first 4 open, openat or open_by_handle_at syscalls (in
       the future more syscalls may match here):

           $ perf trace -e open* --max-events 4
           [root@jouet perf]# trace -e open* --max-events 4
           2272.992 ( 0.037 ms): gnome-shell/1370 openat(dfd: CWD, filename: /proc/self/stat) = 31
           2277.481 ( 0.139 ms): gnome-shell/3039 openat(dfd: CWD, filename: /proc/self/stat) = 65
           3026.398 ( 0.076 ms): gnome-shell/3039 openat(dfd: CWD, filename: /proc/self/stat) = 65
           4294.665 ( 0.015 ms): sed/15879 openat(dfd: CWD, filename: /etc/ld.so.cache, flags: CLOEXEC) = 3
           $

       Trace the first minor page fault when running a workload:

           # perf trace -F min --max-stack=7 --max-events 1 sleep 1
              0.000 ( 0.000 ms): sleep/18006 minfault [__clear_user+0x1a] => 0x5626efa56080 (?k)
                                                __clear_user ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                load_elf_binary ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                search_binary_handler ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                __do_execve_file.isra.33 ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                __x64_sys_execve ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                do_syscall_64 ([kernel.kallsyms])
                                                entry_SYSCALL_64 ([kernel.kallsyms])
           #

       Trace the next min page page fault to take place on the first
       CPU:

           # perf trace -F min --call-graph=dwarf --max-events 1 --cpu 0
              0.000 ( 0.000 ms): Web Content/17136 minfault [js::gc::Chunk::fetchNextDecommittedArena+0x4b] => 0x7fbe6181b000 (?.)
                                                js::gc::FreeSpan::initAsEmpty (inlined)
                                                js::gc::Arena::setAsNotAllocated (inlined)
                                                js::gc::Chunk::fetchNextDecommittedArena (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                js::gc::Chunk::allocateArena (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                js::gc::GCRuntime::allocateArena (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                js::gc::ArenaLists::allocateFromArena (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                js::gc::GCRuntime::tryNewTenuredThing<JSString, (js::AllowGC)1> (inlined)
                                                js::AllocateString<JSString, (js::AllowGC)1> (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                js::Allocate<JSThinInlineString, (js::AllowGC)1> (inlined)
                                                JSThinInlineString::new_<(js::AllowGC)1> (inlined)
                                                AllocateInlineString<(js::AllowGC)1, unsigned char> (inlined)
                                                js::ConcatStrings<(js::AllowGC)1> (/usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so)
                                                [0x18b26e6bc2bd] (/tmp/perf-17136.map)
           #

       Trace the next two sched:sched_switch events, four block:*_plug
       events, the next block:*_unplug and the next three net:*dev_queue
       events, this last one with a backtrace of at most 16 entries,
       system wide:

           # perf trace -e sched:*switch/nr=2/,block:*_plug/nr=4/,block:*_unplug/nr=1/,net:*dev_queue/nr=3,max-stack=16/
              0.000 :0/0 sched:sched_switch:swapper/2:0 [120] S ==> rcu_sched:10 [120]
              0.015 rcu_sched/10 sched:sched_switch:rcu_sched:10 [120] R ==> swapper/2:0 [120]
            254.198 irq/50-iwlwifi/680 net:net_dev_queue:dev=wlp3s0 skbaddr=0xffff93498051f600 len=66
                                                __dev_queue_xmit ([kernel.kallsyms])
            273.977 :0/0 net:net_dev_queue:dev=wlp3s0 skbaddr=0xffff93498051f600 len=78
                                                __dev_queue_xmit ([kernel.kallsyms])
            274.007 :0/0 net:net_dev_queue:dev=wlp3s0 skbaddr=0xffff93498051ff00 len=78
                                                __dev_queue_xmit ([kernel.kallsyms])
           2930.140 kworker/u16:58/2722 block:block_plug:[kworker/u16:58]
           2930.162 kworker/u16:58/2722 block:block_unplug:[kworker/u16:58] 1
           4466.094 jbd2/dm-2-8/748 block:block_plug:[jbd2/dm-2-8]
           8050.123 kworker/u16:30/2694 block:block_plug:[kworker/u16:30]
           8050.271 kworker/u16:30/2694 block:block_plug:[kworker/u16:30]
           #

SEE ALSO         top

       perf-record(1), perf-script(1)

NOTES         top

        1. addr.dso@addr.offset
           mailto:addr.dso@addr.offset

        2. dso@symbol
           mailto:dso@symbol

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the perf (Performance analysis tools for
       Linux (in Linux source tree)) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at 
       ⟨https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git⟩
       on 2024-06-14.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2024-06-13.)  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

perf                           2021-03-06                  PERF-TRACE(1)

Pages that refer to this page: perf(1)perf-ftrace(1)perf-probe(1)strace(1)