Running a Performance Profiling Session

Running a performace profiling session includes, starting and stopping the session, and generating the required performance profiling reports. These processes are described in the following sections.

Starting a Performance Profiling Session

Performance profiling is initiated by running the profctl utility on the target system, with the -start option. This utility considers the components to be profiled as arguments.

If the_process was part of the system image, use the following command to initiate the performance profiling session:

% rsh trumpet arun profctl -start -b the_process

If the_process was loaded dynamically, use the following command:

% rsh trumpet arun profctl -start -a the_process pid

Where pid is the numeric identifier of the process (as returned by the aps command).

Run the application.

Several components can be specified as arguments to the profctl utility.

Stopping a Performance Profiling Session

Performance profiling is stopped by running the profctl utility on the target system, with the -stop option:

% rsh trumpet arun profctl -stop

When performance profiling is stopped, a raw data file is generated for each profiled component within the /tmp directory of the target file system. The name of the file consists of the component name, to which the suffix .prof is added. For example, if only the_process was profiled, the file $CHORUSUS_ROOT/tmp/the_process.prof would be created.

Generating Performance Profiling Reports

Performance profiling reports are generated by the profrpg host utility.

Use the report generator to produce a report for each profiled component as follows:

% cd $CHORUSUS_ROOT/tmp  

% profrpg the_process > the_process.rpg 

Reports should be archived to track the benefits of optimization.