This component implements a CPU service which samples the instruction pointer
of the configured threads on a regular basis for the purpose of statistical
profiling.
The collected samples are written to the LOG session with an individual label
for each thread. By using the 'fs_log' component, the sample data can be
written into separate files if desired.
Configuration options
---------------------
! <config sample_interval_ms="100" sample_duration_s="1">
! <policy label="init -> test-cpu_sampler -> ep" />
! </config>
The 'sample_interval_ms' attribute configures the time between two samples in
milliseconds.
The 'sample_duration_s' attribute configures the overall duration of the
sampling activity in seconds.
The policy configures the threads to be sampled.
The clients of the CPU sampler component must be at least grand children of the
initial init process to have their CPU sessions routed correctly. An example
configuration using a sub-init process can be found in the 'cpu_sampler.run'
script.
Evaluation
----------
Currently, some basic tools for the evaluation of the sampled addresses are
available at
[https://github.com/cproc/genode_stuff/tree/cpu_sampler-16.08]
* Filtering the sampled addresses from the Genode log output
! filter_sampled_addresses_from_log <file containing the Genode log output>
This script extracts the sampled addresses from a file containing the Genode
log output and saves them in the file 'sampled_addresses.txt'. It is not
needed when the addresses have already been written into a separate file by
the 'fs_log' component. The match string (label) in the script might need to
be adapted for the specific scenario.
* Filtering the shared library load addresses from the Genode log output
! filter_ldso_addresses_from_log <file containing the Genode log output>
This script extracts the shared library load addresses from a file containing
the Genode log output and saves them in the file 'ldso_addresses.txt'. To have
these addresses appear in the Genode log output, the sampled component should
be configured with the 'ld_verbose="yes"' XML attribute if it uses shared
libraries. If multiple components in a scenario are configured with this
attribute, the script needs to be adapted to match a specific label.
* Generating statistics
! generate_statistics <ELF image> <file with sampled addresses> [<file with ldso addresses>]
This script generates the files 'statistics_by_function.txt' and
'statistics_by_address.txt'.
The first argument is the name of the ELF image of the sampled component.
The second argument is the name of a file containing the sampled addresses.
The third argument is the name of a file containing the shared library load
addresses. It is only needed if the sampled component uses shared libraries.
The 'statistics_by_function.txt' file lists the names of the sampled
functions, sorted by the highest sample count. Each line comprehends
all sampled addresses which belong to the particular function.
The 'statistics_by_address.txt' file is more detailed than the
'statistics_by_function.txt' file. It lists the sampled addresses, sorted by
the highest sample count, together with the name and file location of the
function the particular address belongs to.
The 'generate_statistics' script uses the 'backtrace' script to determine the
function names and file locations. The best location to use the scripts is
the 'build/.../bin' directory, where all the shared libraries can be found.
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