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+                Notes on Analysing Behaviour Using Events and Tracepoints
+
+                        Documentation written by Mel Gorman
+                PCL information heavily based on email from Ingo Molnar
+
+1. Introduction
+===============
+
+Tracepoints (see Documentation/trace/tracepoints.txt) can be used without
+creating custom kernel modules to register probe functions using the event
+tracing infrastructure.
+
+Simplistically, tracepoints will represent an important event that when can
+be taken in conjunction with other tracepoints to build a "Big Picture" of
+what is going on within the system. There are a large number of methods for
+gathering and interpreting these events. Lacking any current Best Practises,
+this document describes some of the methods that can be used.
+
+This document assumes that debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug and that
+the appropriate tracing options have been configured into the kernel. It is
+assumed that the PCL tool tools/perf has been installed and is in your path.
+
+2. Listing Available Events
+===========================
+
+2.1 Standard Utilities
+----------------------
+
+All possible events are visible from /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events. Simply
+calling
+
+  $ find /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events -type d
+
+will give a fair indication of the number of events available.
+
+2.2 PCL
+-------
+
+Discovery and enumeration of all counters and events, including tracepoints
+are available with the perf tool. Getting a list of available events is a
+simple case of
+
+  $ perf list 2>&1 | grep Tracepoint
+  ext4:ext4_free_inode                     [Tracepoint event]
+  ext4:ext4_request_inode                  [Tracepoint event]
+  ext4:ext4_allocate_inode                 [Tracepoint event]
+  ext4:ext4_write_begin                    [Tracepoint event]
+  ext4:ext4_ordered_write_end              [Tracepoint event]
+  [ .... remaining output snipped .... ]
+
+
+2. Enabling Events
+==================
+
+2.1 System-Wide Event Enabling
+------------------------------
+
+See Documentation/trace/events.txt for a proper description on how events
+can be enabled system-wide. A short example of enabling all events related
+to page allocation would look something like
+
+  $ for i in `find /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events -name "enable" | grep mm_`; do echo 1 > $i; done
+
+2.2 System-Wide Event Enabling with SystemTap
+---------------------------------------------
+
+In SystemTap, tracepoints are accessible using the kernel.trace() function
+call. The following is an example that reports every 5 seconds what processes
+were allocating the pages.
+
+  global page_allocs
+
+  probe kernel.trace("mm_page_alloc") {
+        page_allocs[execname()]++
+  }
+
+  function print_count() {
+        printf ("%-25s %-s\n", "#Pages Allocated", "Process Name")
+        foreach (proc in page_allocs-)
+                printf("%-25d %s\n", page_allocs[proc], proc)
+        printf ("\n")
+        delete page_allocs
+  }
+
+  probe timer.s(5) {
+          print_count()
+  }
+
+2.3 System-Wide Event Enabling with PCL
+---------------------------------------
+
+By specifying the -a switch and analysing sleep, the system-wide events
+for a duration of time can be examined.
+
+ $ perf stat -a \
+        -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct \
+        -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free \
+        sleep 10
+ Performance counter stats for 'sleep 10':
+
+           9630  kmem:mm_page_alloc
+           2143  kmem:mm_page_free_direct
+           7424  kmem:mm_pagevec_free
+
+   10.002577764  seconds time elapsed
+
+Similarly, one could execute a shell and exit it as desired to get a report
+at that point.
+
+2.4 Local Event Enabling
+------------------------
+
+Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt describes how to enable events on a per-thread
+basis using set_ftrace_pid.
+
+2.5 Local Event Enablement with PCL
+-----------------------------------
+
+Events can be activate and tracked for the duration of a process on a local
+basis using PCL such as follows.
+
+  $ perf stat -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct \
+                 -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free ./hackbench 10
+  Time: 0.909
+
+    Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10':
+
+          17803  kmem:mm_page_alloc
+          12398  kmem:mm_page_free_direct
+           4827  kmem:mm_pagevec_free
+
+    0.973913387  seconds time elapsed
+
+3. Event Filtering
+==================
+
+Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt covers in-depth how to filter events in
+ftrace.  Obviously using grep and awk of trace_pipe is an option as well
+as any script reading trace_pipe.
+
+4. Analysing Event Variances with PCL
+=====================================
+
+Any workload can exhibit variances between runs and it can be important
+to know what the standard deviation in. By and large, this is left to the
+performance analyst to do it by hand. In the event that the discrete event
+occurrences are useful to the performance analyst, then perf can be used.
+
+  $ perf stat --repeat 5 -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct
+                        -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free ./hackbench 10
+  Time: 0.890
+  Time: 0.895
+  Time: 0.915
+  Time: 1.001
+  Time: 0.899
+
+   Performance counter stats for './hackbench 10' (5 runs):
+
+          16630  kmem:mm_page_alloc         ( +-   3.542% )
+          11486  kmem:mm_page_free_direct   ( +-   4.771% )
+           4730  kmem:mm_pagevec_free       ( +-   2.325% )
+
+    0.982653002  seconds time elapsed   ( +-   1.448% )
+
+In the event that some higher-level event is required that depends on some
+aggregation of discrete events, then a script would need to be developed.
+
+Using --repeat, it is also possible to view how events are fluctuating over
+time on a system wide basis using -a and sleep.
+
+  $ perf stat -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct \
+                -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free \
+                -a --repeat 10 \
+                sleep 1
+  Performance counter stats for 'sleep 1' (10 runs):
+
+           1066  kmem:mm_page_alloc         ( +-  26.148% )
+            182  kmem:mm_page_free_direct   ( +-   5.464% )
+            890  kmem:mm_pagevec_free       ( +-  30.079% )
+
+    1.002251757  seconds time elapsed   ( +-   0.005% )
+
+5. Higher-Level Analysis with Helper Scripts
+============================================
+
+When events are enabled the events that are triggering can be read from
+/sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe in human-readable format although binary
+options exist as well. By post-processing the output, further information can
+be gathered on-line as appropriate. Examples of post-processing might include
+
+  o Reading information from /proc for the PID that triggered the event
+  o Deriving a higher-level event from a series of lower-level events.
+  o Calculate latencies between two events
+
+Documentation/trace/postprocess/trace-pagealloc-postprocess.pl is an example
+script that can read trace_pipe from STDIN or a copy of a trace. When used
+on-line, it can be interrupted once to generate a report without existing
+and twice to exit.
+
+Simplistically, the script just reads STDIN and counts up events but it
+also can do more such as
+
+  o Derive high-level events from many low-level events. If a number of pages
+    are freed to the main allocator from the per-CPU lists, it recognises
+    that as one per-CPU drain even though there is no specific tracepoint
+    for that event
+  o It can aggregate based on PID or individual process number
+  o In the event memory is getting externally fragmented, it reports
+    on whether the fragmentation event was severe or moderate.
+  o When receiving an event about a PID, it can record who the parent was so
+    that if large numbers of events are coming from very short-lived
+    processes, the parent process responsible for creating all the helpers
+    can be identified
+
+6. Lower-Level Analysis with PCL
+================================
+
+There may also be a requirement to identify what functions with a program
+were generating events within the kernel. To begin this sort of analysis, the
+data must be recorded. At the time of writing, this required root
+
+  $ perf record -c 1 \
+        -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct \
+        -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free \
+        ./hackbench 10
+  Time: 0.894
+  [ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.733 MB perf.data (~32010 samples) ]
+
+Note the use of '-c 1' to set the event period to sample. The default sample
+period is quite high to minimise overhead but the information collected can be
+very coarse as a result.
+
+This record outputted a file called perf.data which can be analysed using
+perf report.
+
+  $ perf report
+  # Samples: 30922
+  #
+  # Overhead    Command                     Shared Object
+  # ........  .........  ................................
+  #
+      87.27%  hackbench  [vdso]
+       6.85%  hackbench  /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
+       2.62%  hackbench  /lib/ld-2.9.so
+       1.52%       perf  [vdso]
+       1.22%  hackbench  ./hackbench
+       0.48%  hackbench  [kernel]
+       0.02%       perf  /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
+       0.01%       perf  /usr/bin/perf
+       0.01%       perf  /lib/ld-2.9.so
+       0.00%  hackbench  /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.9.so
+  #
+  # (For more details, try: perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol)
+  #
+
+According to this, the vast majority of events occured triggered on events
+within the VDSO. With simple binaries, this will often be the case so lets
+take a slightly different example. In the course of writing this, it was
+noticed that X was generating an insane amount of page allocations so lets look
+at it
+
+  $ perf record -c 1 -f \
+                -e kmem:mm_page_alloc -e kmem:mm_page_free_direct \
+                -e kmem:mm_pagevec_free \
+                -p `pidof X`
+
+This was interrupted after a few seconds and
+
+  $ perf report
+  # Samples: 27666
+  #
+  # Overhead  Command                            Shared Object
+  # ........  .......  .......................................
+  #
+      51.95%     Xorg  [vdso]
+      47.95%     Xorg  /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1
+       0.09%     Xorg  /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so
+       0.01%     Xorg  [kernel]
+  #
+  # (For more details, try: perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol)
+  #
+
+So, almost half of the events are occuring in a library. To get an idea which
+symbol.
+
+  $ perf report --sort comm,dso,symbol
+  # Samples: 27666
+  #
+  # Overhead  Command                            Shared Object  Symbol
+  # ........  .......  .......................................  ......
+  #
+      51.95%     Xorg  [vdso]                                   [.] 0x000000ffffe424
+      47.93%     Xorg  /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1  [.] pixmanFillsse2
+       0.09%     Xorg  /lib/i686/cmov/libc-2.9.so               [.] _int_malloc
+       0.01%     Xorg  /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1  [.] pixman_region32_copy_f
+       0.01%     Xorg  [kernel]                                 [k] read_hpet
+       0.01%     Xorg  /opt/gfx-test/lib/libpixman-1.so.0.13.1  [.] get_fast_path
+       0.00%     Xorg  [kernel]                                 [k] ftrace_trace_userstack
+
+To see where within the function pixmanFillsse2 things are going wrong
+
+  $ perf annotate pixmanFillsse2
+  [ ... ]
+    0.00 :         34eeb:       0f 18 08                prefetcht0 (%eax)
+         :      }
+         :
+         :      extern __inline void __attribute__((__gnu_inline__, __always_inline__, _
+         :      _mm_store_si128 (__m128i *__P, __m128i __B) :      {
+         :        *__P = __B;
+   12.40 :         34eee:       66 0f 7f 80 40 ff ff    movdqa %xmm0,-0xc0(%eax)
+    0.00 :         34ef5:       ff
+   12.40 :         34ef6:       66 0f 7f 80 50 ff ff    movdqa %xmm0,-0xb0(%eax)
+    0.00 :         34efd:       ff
+   12.39 :         34efe:       66 0f 7f 80 60 ff ff    movdqa %xmm0,-0xa0(%eax)
+    0.00 :         34f05:       ff
+   12.67 :         34f06:       66 0f 7f 80 70 ff ff    movdqa %xmm0,-0x90(%eax)
+    0.00 :         34f0d:       ff
+   12.58 :         34f0e:       66 0f 7f 40 80          movdqa %xmm0,-0x80(%eax)
+   12.31 :         34f13:       66 0f 7f 40 90          movdqa %xmm0,-0x70(%eax)
+   12.40 :         34f18:       66 0f 7f 40 a0          movdqa %xmm0,-0x60(%eax)
+   12.31 :         34f1d:       66 0f 7f 40 b0          movdqa %xmm0,-0x50(%eax)
+
+At a glance, it looks like the time is being spent copying pixmaps to
+the card.  Further investigation would be needed to determine why pixmaps
+are being copied around so much but a starting point would be to take an
+ancient build of libpixmap out of the library path where it was totally
+forgotten about from months ago!