man pages section 1M: System Administration Commands

busstat(1M)

Name

busstat– report bus-related performance statistics

Synopsis

busstat -e device-inst | -h | -l

busstat [-a] [-n] 
     [-w  device-inst [,pic0=event,picn=event ]]... 
     [-r device-inst]... [interval  [count]]

Description

busstat provides access to the bus-related performance counters in the system. These performance counters allow for the measurement of statistics like hardware clock cycles, bus statistics including DMA and cache coherency transactions on a multiprocessor system. Each bus device that supports these counters can be programmed to count a number of events from a specified list. Each device supports one or more Performance Instrumentation Counters (PIC) that are capable of counting events independently of each other.

Separate events can be selected for each PIC on each instance of these devices. busstat summarizes the counts over the last interval seconds, repeating forever. If a count is given, the statistics are repeated count times.

Only root users can program these counters. Non-root users have the option of reading the counters that have been programmed by a root user.

The default value for the interval argument is 1 second, and the default count is unlimited.

The devices that export these counters are highly platform-dependent and the data may be difficult to interpret without an in-depth understanding of the operation of the components that are being measured and of the system they reside in.

Options

The following options are supported:

-a

Display absolute counter values. The default is delta values.

-e device-inst

Display the list of events that the specified device supports for each pic.

Specify device-inst as device (name) followed by an optional instance number. If an instance number is specified, the events for that instance are displayed. If no instance number is specified, the events for the first instance of the specified device are displayed.

-h

Print a usage message.

-l

List the devices in the system which support performance counters.

-n

Do not display a title in the output. The default is to display titles.

-r device-inst

Read and display all pic values for the specified device

Specify device-inst as device (name) followed by instance number, if specifying an instance number of a device whose counters are to be read and displayed. If all instances of this device are to be read, use device (name) without an instance number. All pic values will be sampled when using the -r option.

-w device-inst [,pic0=event] [,picn=event]

Program (write) the specified devices to count the specified events. Write access to the counters is restricted to root users only. Non-root users can use -r option.

Specify device-inst as device (name) followed by an optional instance number. If specifying an instance number of a device to program these events on. If all instances of this device are to be programmed the same, then use device without an instance number. Specify an event to be counted for a specified pic by providing a comma separated list of picn=event values.

The -e option displays all valid event names for each device. Any devices that are programmed will be sampled every interval seconds and repeated count times. It is recommended that the interval specified is small enough to ensure that counter wraparound will be detected. The rate at which counters wraparound varies from device to device. If a user is programming events using the -w option and busstat detects that another user has changed the events that are being counted, the tool will terminate as the programmed devices are now being controlled by another user. Only one user can be programming a device instance at any one time. Extra devices can be sampled using the -r option. Using multiple instances of the -w option on the same command line, with the same device-inst specifying a different list of events for the pics will give the effect of multiplexing for that device. busstat will switch between the list of events for that device every interval seconds. Event can be a string representing the event name, or even a number representing the bit pattern to be programmed into the Performance Control Register (PCR). This assumes explicit knowledge of the meaning of the control register bits for a device. The number can be specified in hexadecimal, decimal, or octal, using the usual conventions of strtol(3C).

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

0: Successful completion.
1: An error occurred.
2: Another user is writing to the same devices.

Examples

SPARC Only

Example 1 Programming and monitoring the Address Controller counters

In this example, ac0 refers to the Address Controller instance 0. The counters are programmed to count Memory Bank stalls on an Ultra Enterprise system at 10 second intervals with the values displayed in absolute form instead of deltas.

# busstat -a -w ac0,pic0=mem_bank0_stall,pic1=mem_bank1_stall 10
time  dev   event0            pic0   event1             pic1
10    ac0   mem_bank0_stall   1234   mem_bank1_stall    5678
20    ac0   mem_bank0_stall   5678   mem_bank1_stall   12345
30    ac0   mem_bank0_stall  12345   mem_bank1_stall   56789
...

For a complete list of the supported events for a device, use the -e option.

Example 2 Programming and monitoring the counters on all instances of the Address Controller

In this example, ac refers to all ac instances. This example programs all instances of the Address Controller counters to count_clock cycles and mem_bank0_rds at 2 second intervals, 100 times, displaying the values as deltas.

# busstat -w ac,pic0=clock_cycles,pic1=mem_bank0_rds 2 100
time  dev     event0          pic0            event1          pic1
2     ac0     clock_cycles    167242902       mem_bank0_rds   3144
2     ac1     clock_cycles    167254476       mem_bank0_rds   1392
4     ac0     clock_cycles    168025190       mem_bank0_rds   40302
4     ac1     clock_cycles    168024056       mem_bank0_rds   40580
...

Example 3 Monitoring the events being counted

This example monitors the events that are being counted on the sbus1 device, 100 times at 1 second intervals. It suggests that a root user has changed the events that sbus1 was counting to be dvma_tlb_misses and interrupts instead of pio_cycles.

% busstat -r sbus0 1 100

time    dev     event0               pic0       event1          pic1
1       sbus1   pio_cycles           2321       pio_cycles      2321
2       sbus1   pio_cycles           48         pio_cycles      48
3       sbus1   pio_cycles           49         pio_cycles      49
4       sbus1   pio_cycles           2281       pio_cycles      2281
5       sbus1   dvma_tlb_misses      0          interrupts      0
6       sbus1   dvma_tlb_misses      6          interrupts      2
7       sbus1   dvma_tlb_misses      8          interrupts      11
...

Example 4 Event Multiplexing

This example programs ac0 to alternate between counting (clock cycles, mem_bank0_rds) and (addr_pkts, data_pkts) at 2 second intervals while also monitoring what ac1 is counting :

It shows the expected output of the above busstat command. Another root user on the machine has changed the events that this user had programmed and busstat has detected this and terminates the command with a message.

# busstat -w ac0,pic0=clock_cycles,pic1=mem_bank0_rds \
           -w ac0,pic0=addr_pkts,pic1=data_pkts \
           -r ac1 2

time    dev     event0          pic0            event1          pic1
2       ac0     addr_pkts       12866           data_pkts       17015
2       ac1     rio_pkts        385             rio_pkts        385
4       ac0     clock_cycles    168018914       mem_bank0_rds   2865
4       ac1     rio_pkts        506             rio_pkts        506
6       ac0     addr_pkts       144236          data_pkts       149223
6       ac1     rio_pkts        522             rio_pkts        522
8       ac0     clock_cycles    168021245       mem_bank0_rds   2564
8       ac1     rio_pkts        387             rio_pkts        387
10      ac0     addr_pkts       144292          data_pkts       159645
10      ac1     rio_pkts        506             rio_pkts        506
12      ac0     clock_cycles    168020364       mem_bank0_rds   2665
12      ac1     rio_pkts        522             rio_pkts        522
busstat: events changed (possibly by another busstat).
#

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWcsu