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authorMiguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>2026-08-16 15:32:33 +0200
committerMiguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>2026-08-23 21:27:17 +0200
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tree93a1ed1d337bc53adf1e572c2586d347703b286e /tools/perf/Documentation/examples.txt
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kbuild: rust: keep Rust objects out of Clang LTO with inline helpersgrafted
Under `CONFIG_LTO_CLANG` + `CONFIG_RUST_INLINE_HELPERS`, one may hit `objtool` errors such as: vmlinux.o: error: objtool: _R..._3Gsp4boot+0xd6a: can't find jump dest instruction at .text._R..._3Gsp4boot+0x1dfd The reason is that in such builds, the Clang invocation that compiles the combined Rust plus helpers bitcode emits LLVM bitcode (again) -- the final code generation happens in the linker's LTO step, which the `-mllvm` trap options passed to Clang do not reach. This, in turn, means that unreachable traps are missing, and the impossible paths do not merely fallthrough to the next symbol, but past the end of their own section, since LTO builds place each function in its own section. Thus filter `CC_FLAGS_LTO` out of the Clang invocation, so that it always emits machine code directly, with the traps in place. Assisted-by: LLM Cc: Gary Guo <gary@garyguo.net> Cc: Boqun Feng <boqun@kernel.org> Cc: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com> Cc: Matthew Maurer <mmaurer@google.com> Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Fixes: 3a2486cc1da5 ("kbuild: rust: provide an option to inline C helpers into Rust") Acked-by: Gary Guo <gary@garyguo.net> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260816133233.197500-2-ojeda@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
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+
+ ------------------------------
+ ****** perf by examples ******
+ ------------------------------
+
+[ From an e-mail by Ingo Molnar, https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20090804195717.GA5998@elte.hu ]
+
+
+First, discovery/enumeration of available counters can be done via
+'perf list':
+
+titan:~> perf list
+ [...]
+ kmem:kmalloc [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:kmem_cache_alloc [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:kmalloc_node [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:kmem_cache_alloc_node [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:kfree [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:kmem_cache_free [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_free [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_free_batched [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_alloc [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_alloc_zone_locked [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain [Tracepoint event]
+ kmem:mm_page_alloc_extfrag [Tracepoint event]
+
+Then any (or all) of the above event sources can be activated and
+measured. For example the page alloc/free properties of a 'hackbench
+run' are:
+
+ titan:~> perf stat -e kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain -e kmem:mm_page_alloc
+ -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched -e kmem:mm_page_free ./hackbench 10
+ Time: 0.575
+
+ Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10':
+
+ 13857 kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain
+ 27576 kmem:mm_page_alloc
+ 6025 kmem:mm_page_free_batched
+ 20934 kmem:mm_page_free
+
+ 0.613972165 seconds time elapsed
+
+You can observe the statistical properties as well, by using the
+'repeat the workload N times' feature of perf stat:
+
+ titan:~> perf stat --repeat 5 -e kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain -e
+ kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched -e
+ kmem:mm_page_free ./hackbench 10
+ Time: 0.627
+ Time: 0.644
+ Time: 0.564
+ Time: 0.559
+ Time: 0.626
+
+ Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10' (5 runs):
+
+ 12920 kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain ( +- 3.359% )
+ 25035 kmem:mm_page_alloc ( +- 3.783% )
+ 6104 kmem:mm_page_free_batched ( +- 0.934% )
+ 18376 kmem:mm_page_free ( +- 4.941% )
+
+ 0.643954516 seconds time elapsed ( +- 2.363% )
+
+Furthermore, these tracepoints can be used to sample the workload as
+well. For example the page allocations done by a 'git gc' can be
+captured the following way:
+
+ titan:~/git> perf record -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -c 1 ./git gc
+ Counting objects: 1148, done.
+ Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
+ Compressing objects: 100% (450/450), done.
+ Writing objects: 100% (1148/1148), done.
+ Total 1148 (delta 690), reused 1148 (delta 690)
+ [ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.267 MB perf.data (~11679 samples) ]
+
+To check which functions generated page allocations:
+
+ titan:~/git> perf report
+ # Samples: 10646
+ #
+ # Overhead Command Shared Object
+ # ........ ............... ..........................
+ #
+ 23.57% git-repack /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ 21.81% git /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ 14.59% git ./git
+ 11.79% git-repack ./git
+ 7.12% git /lib64/ld-2.5.so
+ 3.16% git-repack /lib64/libpthread-2.5.so
+ 2.09% git-repack /bin/bash
+ 1.97% rm /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ 1.39% mv /lib64/ld-2.5.so
+ 1.37% mv /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ 1.12% git-repack /lib64/ld-2.5.so
+ 0.95% rm /lib64/ld-2.5.so
+ 0.90% git-update-serv /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ 0.73% git-update-serv /lib64/ld-2.5.so
+ 0.68% perf /lib64/libpthread-2.5.so
+ 0.64% git-repack /usr/lib64/libz.so.1.2.3
+
+Or to see it on a more finegrained level:
+
+titan:~/git> perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol
+# Samples: 10646
+#
+# Overhead Command Shared Object Symbol
+# ........ ............... .......................... ......
+#
+ 9.35% git-repack ./git [.] insert_obj_hash
+ 9.12% git ./git [.] insert_obj_hash
+ 7.31% git /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] memcpy
+ 6.34% git-repack /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] _int_malloc
+ 6.24% git-repack /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] memcpy
+ 5.82% git-repack /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] __GI___fork
+ 5.47% git /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] _int_malloc
+ 2.99% git /lib64/libc-2.5.so [.] memset
+
+Furthermore, call-graph sampling can be done too, of page
+allocations - to see precisely what kind of page allocations there
+are:
+
+ titan:~/git> perf record -g -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -c 1 ./git gc
+ Counting objects: 1148, done.
+ Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
+ Compressing objects: 100% (450/450), done.
+ Writing objects: 100% (1148/1148), done.
+ Total 1148 (delta 690), reused 1148 (delta 690)
+ [ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.963 MB perf.data (~42069 samples) ]
+
+ titan:~/git> perf report -g
+ # Samples: 10686
+ #
+ # Overhead Command Shared Object
+ # ........ ............... ..........................
+ #
+ 23.25% git-repack /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ |
+ |--50.00%-- _int_free
+ |
+ |--37.50%-- __GI___fork
+ | make_child
+ |
+ |--12.50%-- ptmalloc_unlock_all2
+ | make_child
+ |
+ --6.25%-- __GI_strcpy
+ 21.61% git /lib64/libc-2.5.so
+ |
+ |--30.00%-- __GI_read
+ | |
+ | --83.33%-- git_config_from_file
+ | git_config
+ | |
+ [...]
+
+Or you can observe the whole system's page allocations for 10
+seconds:
+
+titan:~/git> perf stat -a -e kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain -e
+kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched -e
+kmem:mm_page_free sleep 10
+
+ Performance counter stats for 'sleep 10':
+
+ 171585 kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain
+ 322114 kmem:mm_page_alloc
+ 73623 kmem:mm_page_free_batched
+ 254115 kmem:mm_page_free
+
+ 10.000591410 seconds time elapsed
+
+Or observe how fluctuating the page allocations are, via statistical
+analysis done over ten 1-second intervals:
+
+ titan:~/git> perf stat --repeat 10 -a -e kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain -e
+ kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_batched -e
+ kmem:mm_page_free sleep 1
+
+ Performance counter stats for 'sleep 1' (10 runs):
+
+ 17254 kmem:mm_page_pcpu_drain ( +- 3.709% )
+ 34394 kmem:mm_page_alloc ( +- 4.617% )
+ 7509 kmem:mm_page_free_batched ( +- 4.820% )
+ 25653 kmem:mm_page_free ( +- 3.672% )
+
+ 1.058135029 seconds time elapsed ( +- 3.089% )
+
+Or you can annotate the recorded 'git gc' run on a per symbol basis
+and check which instructions/source-code generated page allocations:
+
+ titan:~/git> perf annotate __GI___fork
+ ------------------------------------------------
+ Percent | Source code & Disassembly of libc-2.5.so
+ ------------------------------------------------
+ :
+ :
+ : Disassembly of section .plt:
+ : Disassembly of section .text:
+ :
+ : 00000031a2e95560 <__fork>:
+ [...]
+ 0.00 : 31a2e95602: b8 38 00 00 00 mov $0x38,%eax
+ 0.00 : 31a2e95607: 0f 05 syscall
+ 83.42 : 31a2e95609: 48 3d 00 f0 ff ff cmp $0xfffffffffffff000,%rax
+ 0.00 : 31a2e9560f: 0f 87 4d 01 00 00 ja 31a2e95762 <__fork+0x202>
+ 0.00 : 31a2e95615: 85 c0 test %eax,%eax
+
+( this shows that 83.42% of __GI___fork's page allocations come from
+ the 0x38 system call it performs. )
+
+etc. etc. - a lot more is possible. I could list a dozen of
+other different usecases straight away - neither of which is
+possible via /proc/vmstat.
+
+/proc/vmstat is not in the same league really, in terms of
+expressive power of system analysis and performance
+analysis.
+
+All that the above results needed were those new tracepoints
+in include/tracing/events/kmem.h.
+
+ Ingo
+
+