User Commands cputrack(1)
NAME
cputrack - monitor process and LWP behavior using CPU per-
formance countersSYNOPSIS
cputrack -c eventspec [-c eventspec]... [-efntvD]
[-N count] [-o pathname] [-T interval] command [args]
cputrack -c eventspec [-c eventspec]... -p pid [-efntvD]
[-N count] [-o pathname] [-T interval]
cputrack -h
DESCRIPTION
The cputrack utility allows CPU performance counters to be
used to monitor the behavior of a process or family of processes running on the system. If interval is specifiedwith the -T option, cputrack samples activity every interval
seconds, repeating forever. If a count is specified with the-N option, the statistics are repeated count times for each
process tracked. If neither are specified, an interval ofone second is used. If command and optional args are speci-
fied, cputrack runs the command with the arguments given
while monitoring the specified CPU performance events. Alternatively, the process ID of an existing process can bespecified using the -p option.
Because cputrack is an unprivileged program, it is subject
to the same restrictions that apply to truss(1). For exam-
ple, setuid(2) executables cannot be tracked. OPTIONS The following options are supported:-c eventspec Specifies a set of events for the CPU per-
formance counters to monitor. The syntax of these event specifications is: [picn=]eventn[,attr[n][=val]][,[picn=]eventn [,attr[n][=val]],...,]You can use the -h option to obtain a list
of available events and attributes. This causes generation of the usage message. You can omit an explicit counter assignment, in which case cpustat attempts to choose a capable counter automatically.SunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 1
User Commands cputrack(1)
Attribute values can be expressed in hexade-
cimal, octal, or decimal notation, in a for-
mat suitable for strtoll(3C). An attribute present in the event specification without an explicit value receives a default value of 1. An attribute without a corresponding counter number is applied to all counters in the specification. The semantics of these event specifications can be determined by reading the CPU manufacturer's documentation for the events.Multiple -c options can be specified, in
which case cputrack cycles between the dif-
ferent event settings on each sample.-D Enables debug mode.
-e Follows all exec(2), or execve(2) system
calls.-f Follows all children created by fork(2),
fork1(2), or vfork(2) system calls.-h Prints an extended help message on how to
use the utility, how to program theprocessor-dependent counters, and where to
look for more detailed information.-n Omits all header output (useful if cputrack
is the beginning of a pipeline).-N count Specifies the maximum number of CPU perfor-
mance counter samples to take before exit-
ing.-o outfile Specifies file to be used for the cputrack
output.-p pid Interprets the argument as the process ID of
an existing process to which process counter context should be attached and monitored.SunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 2
User Commands cputrack(1)
-t Prints an additional column of processor
cycle counts, if available on the current architecture.-T interval Specifies the interval between CPU perfor-
mance counter samples in seconds. Very small intervals may cause some samples to be skipped. See WARNINGS.-v Enables more verbose output.
USAGE
The operating system enforces certain restrictions on the tracing of processes. In particular, a command whose object file cannot be read by a user cannot be tracked by thatuser; set-uid and set-gid commands can only be tracked by a
privileged user. Unless it is run by a privileged user, cpu-
track loses control of any process that performs an exec()of a set-id or unreadable object file. Such processes con-
tinue normally, though independently of cputrack, from the
point of the exec().The system may run out of per-user process slots when the -f
option is used, since cputrack runs one controlling process
for each process being tracked.The times printed by cputrack correspond to the wallclock
time when the hardware counters were actually sample. The time is derived from the same timebase as gethrtime(3C).The cputrack utility attaches performance counter context to
each process that it examines. The presence of this context allows the performance counters to be multiplexed between different processes on the system, but it cannot be used at the same time as the cpustat(1M) utility. Once an instance of the cpustat utility is running, furtherattempts to run cputrack will fail until all instances of
cpustat terminate.Sometimes cputrack provides sufficient flexibility and
prints sufficient statistics to make adding the observation code to an application unnecessary. However, more control is occasionally desired. Because the same performance counterSunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 3
User Commands cputrack(1)
context is used by both the application itself and by theagent LWP injected into the application by cputrack, it is
possible for an application to interact with the counter context to achieve some interesting capabilities. Seecpc_enable(3CPC).
The processor cycle counts enabled by the -t option always
apply to both user and system modes, regardless of the set-
tings applied to the performance counter registers.The output of cputrack is designed to be readily parseable
by nawk(1) and perl(1), thereby allowing performance toolsto be composed by embedding cputrack in scripts. Alterna-
tively, tools may be constructed directly using the sameAPIs that cputrack is built upon, using the facilities of
libcpc(3LIB) and libpctx(3LIB). See cpc(3CPC).Although cputrack uses performance counter context to main-
tain separate performance counter values for each LWP, some of the events that can be counted will inevitably beimpacted by other activities occurring on the system, par-
ticularly for limited resources that are shared between processes (for example, cache miss rates). For such events, it may also be interesting to observe overall system behavior with cpustat(1M).For the -T interval option, if interval is specified as
zero, no periodic sampling is performed. The performancecounters are only sampled when the process creates or des-
troys an LWP, or it invokes fork(2), exec(2), or exit(2).EXAMPLES
SPARC Example 1 Using Performance Counters to Count Clock CyclesIn this example, the utility is being used on a machine con-
taining an UltraSPARC-III+ processor. The counters are set
to count processor clock cycles and instructions dispatched in user mode while running the sleep(1) command.example% cputrack -c pic0=Cycle_cnt,pic1=Instr_cnt sleep 10
time lwp event pic0 pic1 1.007 1 tick 765308 219233 2.007 1 tick 0 0SunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 4
User Commands cputrack(1)
4.017 1 tick 0 0 6.007 1 tick 0 0 8.007 1 tick 0 0 10.007 1 tick 0 0 10.017 1 exit 844703 228058 Example 2 Counting External Cache References and Misses This example shows more verbose output while following the fork() and exec() of a simple shell script on an UltraSPARC machine. The counters are measuring the number of external cache references and external cache misses. Notice that the explicit pic0 and pic1 names can be omitted where there are no ambiguities.example% cputrack -fev -c EC_ref,EC_hit /bin/ulimit -c
time pid lwp event pic0 pic10.007 101142 1 init_lwp 805286 20023
0.023 101142 1 fork # 101143
0.026 101143 1 init_lwp 1015382 24461
0.029 101143 1 fini_lwp 1025546 25074
0.029 101143 1 exec 1025546 25074 0.000 101143 1 exec \# '/usr/bin/sh /usr/bin/basename\
/bin/ulimit'0.039 101143 1 init_lwp 1025546 25074
0.050 101143 1 fini_lwp 1140482 27806
0.050 101143 1 exec 1140482 278060.000 101143 1 exec # '/usr/bin/expr \
//bin/ulimit : [^/])/*$ : .*/*) : )$ | //bin/ulimi'
0.059 101143 1 init_lwp 1140482 27806
0.075 101143 1 fini_lwp 1237647 30207
0.075 101143 1 exit 1237647 30207 unlimited0.081 101142 1 fini_lwp 953383 23814
0.081 101142 1 exit 953383 23814 x86 Example 3 Counting Instructions This example shows how many instructions were executed in the application and in the kernel to print the date on aSunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 5
User Commands cputrack(1)
Pentium III machine:example% cputrack -c inst_retired,inst_retired,nouser1,sys1 date
time lwp event pic0 pic1 Fri Aug 20 20:03:08 PDT 1999 0.072 1 exit 246725 339666 Example 4 Counting TLB HitsThis example shows how to use processor-specific attributes
to count TLB hits on a Pentium 4 machine:example% cputrack -c ITLB_reference,emask=1 date
time lwp event pic0 Fri Aug 20 20:03:08 PDT 1999 0.072 1 exit 246725 WARNINGS By running any instance of the cpustat(1M) utility, all existing performance counter context is forcibly invalidated across the machine. This may in turn cause all invocationsof the cputrack command to exit prematurely with unspecified
errors. If cpustat is invoked on a system that has CPU performance counters which are not supported by Solaris, the following message appears:cputrack: cannot access performance counters - Operation not applicable
This error message implies that cpc_open() has failed and is
documented in cpc_open(3CPC). Review this documentation for
more information about the problem and possible solutions.If a short interval is requested, cputrack may not be able
to keep up with the desired sample rate. In this case, someSunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 6
User Commands cputrack(1)
samples may be dropped.ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | diagnostic/cpu-counters |
| Interface Stability | Committed ||_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
nawk(1), perl(1), proc(1), truss(1), prstat(1M), cpustat(1M), exec(2), exit(2), fork(2), setuid(2), vfork(2),gethrtime(3C), strtoll(3C), cpc(3CPC), cpc_bind_pctx(3CPC),
cpc_enable(3CPC), cpc_open(3CPC), libcpc(3LIB),
libpctx(3LIB), proc(4), attributes(5)SunOS 5.11 Last change: 19 Apr 2004 7