Re: [patch 0/4] perf_counter tools: support annotation of live kernel modules

Ingo Molnar
2009-07-03T07:24:21Z

* Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de> wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 14:10 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 09:17 +0200, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> >
> > > I've been pondering a perf archive tool
> > > that would package everything that's needed to do analysis on a
> > > different box. One big problem though, is that while you can easily
> > > package vmlinux and modules, what about all the userland binaries? A
> > > large perf.data and/or debug info binaries can easily make transport
> > > impractical enough.
> >
> > I would simply extend the current file header with another section in
> > which we do a structured storage of the data structures we currently
> > build in perf-report. That is, the dso and symbol bits.
> >
> > If we then run perf-report on a file containing such a section we read
> > that data instead of trying to locate them the regular way.
>
> That's a good idea.
>
> If uname doesn't match stored record time uname, you're not live,
> so tools require an exportable perf.data. If you're not live and
> not on the same host, annotate requires binaries appended via an
> export tool with --sym-filter -k -u -% whatever capability.

'perf export' could be a nice shortcut to convert a local perf.data
into a off-line analysable body of data.

Ingo