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authorSamuel Thibault <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>2016-04-20 01:03:34 +0200
committerSamuel Thibault <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>2016-04-20 01:03:34 +0200
commit79586834089f2938b9e78dfb319d07edcad64ecd (patch)
tree0a78dccf69dd30f4bc4fde58487f39cf576485a2 /microkernel/mach
parent1e8d71e3fe009302711a10f075ce2409e8d98a38 (diff)
document how to profile the kernel
Diffstat (limited to 'microkernel/mach')
-rw-r--r--microkernel/mach/gnumach.mdwn1
-rw-r--r--microkernel/mach/gnumach/profiling.mdwn31
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diff --git a/microkernel/mach/gnumach.mdwn b/microkernel/mach/gnumach.mdwn
index 88aa1432..ba970a03 100644
--- a/microkernel/mach/gnumach.mdwn
+++ b/microkernel/mach/gnumach.mdwn
@@ -79,6 +79,7 @@ GNU/Hurd.
* [[Reference_Manual]]
* [[Building]]
* [[Debugging]]
+ * [[Profiling]]
* [[Boot_Trace]]
* [[Memory_Management]]
* [[Continuation]]s
diff --git a/microkernel/mach/gnumach/profiling.mdwn b/microkernel/mach/gnumach/profiling.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..5b3f5e0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/microkernel/mach/gnumach/profiling.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2016
+Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation
+License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+Here is some guide to profile the GNU Mach kernel uses for a userland process.
+
+[[!toc levels=2]]
+
+First, it needs to be enabled: since this will leak kernel addresses to userland, it is not enabled by default. Pass `--enable-kernelsample` to the `./configure` invocation, and rebuild the kernel.
+
+Then you need to get the start and end of the text portion of the kernel:
+
+ nm gnumach | grep " _start$"
+ nm gnumach | grep " etext$"
+
+And you need to patch glibc to use these start and end instead of the userland starts and ends: in `glibc/csu/gmon-start.c`, in the `__monstartup` call, replace `TEXT_START` and `&etext` with the start and end addresses obtained above. Rebuild libc (`make lib` is enough). Install `csu/gcrt[01].o` in `/usr/lib/i386-gnu/`.
+
+Now, you can rebuild your application with `-pg`, run it (for translators, use `settrans -a`, work with it, and use `settrans -fga` to terminate it nicely), you will get a `gmon.out` file. Normally you would just run `gprof application` to get the profiling, but here we need to get symbols from the kernel:
+
+ nm -n gnumach > /tmp/list
+
+and then we can run `gprof -S /tmp/list application`, and the kernel profiling will show up.
+
+You will probably notice that `spl0` will show up a lot, more precisely the `sti` instruction. This is because all the kernel code running with interrupts disabled can't be profiled, and will be accounted for on that instruction (which triggers the profiling interrupts which should have happened while the interrupts were disabled).