From: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
To: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>,
Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>, Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>,
Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>,
Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>,
James Clark <james.clark@linaro.org>,
linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Tanushree Shah <tshah@linux.ibm.com>
Subject: [PATCH v1] perf evlist: Warn when 'sleep' workload is used without system-wide (-a) option
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2026 19:10:38 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260806021038.2291417-1-irogers@google.com> (raw)
A common mistake when trying to record system-wide profiles for a given
duration is running commands like 'perf record sleep 1' or 'perf stat
sleep 1' without passing '-a' / '--all-cpus'. When '-a' is omitted, perf
defaults to per-process monitoring of the sleep process itself, which
does not collect system-wide activity and records very few events.
Add a warning in evlist__prepare_workload() when the workload executable
is 'sleep' and system-wide mode is not enabled.
Signed-off-by: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
---
tools/perf/util/evlist.c | 14 ++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)
diff --git a/tools/perf/util/evlist.c b/tools/perf/util/evlist.c
index eb7c0d7be064..d53f594ace86 100644
--- a/tools/perf/util/evlist.c
+++ b/tools/perf/util/evlist.c
@@ -1562,6 +1562,20 @@ int evlist__prepare_workload(struct evlist *evlist, struct target *target, const
int child_ready_pipe[2], go_pipe[2];
char bf;
+ if (argv && argv[0] && target && !target->system_wide) {
+ const char *cmd = strrchr(argv[0], '/');
+
+ if (cmd)
+ cmd++;
+ else
+ cmd = argv[0];
+
+ if (!strcmp(cmd, "sleep")) {
+ ui__warning("workload '%s' specified without the system-wide (-a) option\n",
+ cmd);
+ }
+ }
+
evlist__set_workload_cork_fd(evlist, -1);
if (pipe(child_ready_pipe) < 0) {
--
2.55.0.629.g250fe7f194-goog
next reply other threads:[~2026-08-06 2:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-08-06 2:10 Ian Rogers [this message]
2026-08-06 2:19 ` [PATCH v1] perf evlist: Warn when 'sleep' workload is used without system-wide (-a) option sashiko-bot
2026-08-06 4:14 ` [PATCH v2] " Ian Rogers
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