Name

profile - Process or system profiler

Synopsis

$ profile [-p PID] [-a] [-e] [-d] [-f] [-w] [-t event_type] [COMMAND_TO_PROFILE]

Description

profile records profiling information that can then be read with ProfileViewer.

Options

• -p PID: Target PID
• -a: Profile all processes (super-user only), result at /sys/kernel/profile
• -e: Enable
• -d: Disable
• -f: Free the profiling buffer for the associated process(es).
• -w: Enable profiling and wait for user input to disable.
• -t event_type: Enable tracking specific event type

Event type can be one of: sample, context_switch, page_fault, syscall, read, kmalloc and kfree.

Examples

# Enable whole-system profiling
$ profile -ae
# ...then, to stop
$ profile -ad

# Profile a running process, with PID 42
$ profile -p 42

# Profile syscalls made by echo
$ profile -t syscall -- echo "Hello friends!"

See also

• Profiler(1) GUI for viewing profiling data produced by profile.
• strace(1)