Other Utilities

Some other utilities should not need to be used in normal circumstances. They are documented here for completeness, with a description of the circumstances in which it might be necessary to use them.

The er_archive Utility

The syntax of the er_archive command is as follows.

er_archive [-nqAF] experiment
er_archive -V

The er_archive utility is automatically run when an experiment completes normally, or when the Performance Analyzer or er_print utility is started on an experiment. The er_archive utility is also run automatically by er_kernel if a kernel profiling session is terminated by Ctrl-C or a kill command. It reads the list of shared objects referenced in the experiment, and constructs an archive file for each. Each output file is named with a suffix of .archive, and contains function and module mappings for the shared object.

If the target program terminates abnormally, the er_archive utility might not be run by the Collector. If you want to examine the experiment from an abnormally-terminated run on a different machine from the one on which it was recorded, you must run the er_archive utility on the experiment, on the machine on which the data was recorded. To ensure that the load objects are available on the machine to which the experiment is copied, use the -A option.

An archive file is generated for all shared objects referred to in the experiment. These archives contain the addresses, sizes and names of each object file and each function in the load object, as well as the absolute path of the load object and a time stamp for its last modification.

If the shared object cannot be found when the er_archive utility is run, or if it has a time stamp differing from that recorded in the experiment, or if the er_archive utility is run on a different machine from that on which the experiment was recorded, the archive file contains a warning. Warnings are also written to stderr whenever the er_archive utility is run manually (without the -q flag).

The following sections describe the options accepted by the er_archive utility.

-n

Archive the named experiment only, not any of its descendants.

–q

Do not write any warnings to stderr. Warnings are incorporated into the archive file, and shown in the Performance Analyzer or output from the er_print utility.

–A

Request writing of all load objects into the experiment. This argument can be used to generate experiments that are more readily copied to a machine other than the one on which the experiment was recorded.

–F

Force writing or rewriting of archive files. This argument can be used to run er_archive by hand, to rewrite files that had warnings.

–V

Write version number information for the er_archive utility and exit.

The er_export Utility

The syntax of the er_export command is as follows.

er_export [-V] experiment

The er_export utility converts the raw data in an experiment into ASCII text. The format and the content of the file are subject to change, and should not be relied on for any use. This utility is intended to be used only when the Performance Analyzer cannot read an experiment; the output allows the tool developers to understand the raw data and analyze the failure. The –V option prints version number information.