Using perf, the Linux Performance Analysis tool on
Ubuntu Karmic

A lot has been going on with Linux performance counters (now called
performance events), but there is enough functionality in the 2.6.31 kernel that
ships with Ubuntu karmic to be able to use some of the features available in
perf. I recently found it useful when debugging a performance issue on my mythtv
frontend.

To build perf, first install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libelf-dev binutils-dev

Then grab a recent kernel source tree and build perf:

wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.33-rc3.tar.bz2

tar xjf linux-2.6.33-rc3.tar.bz2

cd linux-2.6.33-rc3/tools/perf

make

make install

It will warn that libdwarf-dev is not installed, but the version in karmic is
too old and regardless libdwarf is only required for event tracing that appeared
in more recent kernels. perf installs into ~/bin/perf. You should then be able
to use the top, stat, list, record, report and annotate options.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on January 10, 2010.