spot [ options ] [ target target-args | -p pid ]
The spot command runs a set of performance tools on the target application and renders the output as a set of hyperlinked webpages. There are two ways that spot can be used:
spot attaches to a running process and gathers data from the running process using a variety of probes.
The application is run multiple times, each time under a different probe. So it is necessary for the application to be able to run multiple times without user intervention.
The webpages that spot produces record the following information (if it is available).
Information about the system which the experiment was collected on
Information about how the application was built
Performance counter events recorded by the CPU during the run of the application. This data can be used to indicate the types of events which are causing significant stall time.
This indicates the mix of instructions executed by the application (SPARC only).
This data is from the collect command which returns the amount of time spent in the various routines. This data is rendered using er_html.
The collect command is used to profile the application based on the performance counter events that contribute the largest stall time. The resulting profiles indicate where in the program the stall events are occurring. This data is rendered using er_html.
This data indicates how often each routine is called, and also how often each individual instruction in the routine is called (SPARC only).
Data on utilization of system-wide utilization of bandwidth for all running processes. It is not possible to attribute bandwidth to a particular process unless that process is the only one active at the time. This data can only be collected if the user has the appropriate permissions to access the performance counters on a system-wide basis. (SPARC only).
Data on the number of traps encountered over the run of the program. This information is only available if the user has the appropriate permissions to access trapstat data (SPARC only).
If gnuplot is available on the path, then additional graphs will be available that show the various events over time.
If invoked with no arguments, print a usage message. If /bin/perl is not installed on the system, fail with the message: "spot: Command not found", even though it is perl, not spot that is missing. If the version of perl on the system is not recent enough, spot may fail with a message about an undefined variable.
Specify a path for the Oracle Solaris Studio components used by spot. If both Oracle Solaris Studio and spot are installed in their default locations, spot will find the components it needs. However, if either of them is installed in a different location, then this option can be used to specify the path. This option is also useful if the user wants to override the default compiler and use a compiler installed in a location different from the default one.
Set the level of debug information to be printed. The default is 1. A setting of 0 means no output from spot, a setting of 2 means full debug information. The debug output will be available in debug.log in the completed report.
Place output from spot in a subdirectory of the specified directory. If not specified, the default is to place the data in the current directory.
Print help information.
Place the output from spot in the named subdirectory named name<n> where n is the first name not in use. If the name is specified, it may have any form, as long as the directory does not exist at the time spot is invoked. If the name is not specified then spot will default to using spot_run<n>
Attach spot to a running process and produce report.
Suppress all spot output. (Equivanlent to -D 0)
This option is only valid when spot is attaching to a running process. It sets the number of seconds for which each of the probes should be attached to the process. The default is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
Print the current version. Do not examine further arguments and perform no further processing.
Print the current version and further detailed debugging information about the conversion being run. (Equivalent to -D 2)
This option will cause spot to try to collect extended information about the performance of the application. It will collect hardware counter profiles of the application using those performance counters that have been identified by ripc as large contributors to the overall stall time. If possible, bandwidth and trap data will also be collected; the user needs the appropriate permissions for bandwidth and trap data to be collected.
analyzer (1) , collect (1) , er_archive (1) , er_cp (1) , er_export (1) , er_html (1) , er_mv (1) , er_print (1) , er_rm (1) , er_src (1)
Performance Analyzer manual