Oprofile

OProfile is a system-wide profiler for Linux systems, capable of profiling all running code at low overhead. OProfile is released under the GNU GPL. This version enables cycle count profiling of code running on the SPE.

It consists of a kernel driver and a daemon for collecting sample data, and several post-profiling tools for turning data into information. OProfile leverages the hardware performance counters of the CPU to enable profiling of a wide variety of interesting statistics, which can also be used for basic time-spent profiling. All code is profiled: hardware and software interrupt handlers, kernel modules, the kernel, shared libraries, and applications.

Note. In order to use this Oprofile release on the IBM BladeCenter QS20 you need to install firmware level 6.14.E or above.

Binary packages


File Description
oprofile-0.9.2-0.3.ppc.rpm Oprofile binary package.
oprofile-debuginfo-0.9.2-0.3.ppc.rpm Oprofile debuginfo package.

Source files


File Description
oprofile-0.9.2-0.3.src.rpm Source RPM package
oprofile-0.9.2-cell.patch Adds Cell BE support
oprofile-0.9.2-xml.patch Adds xml formatting to opreport
oprofile-0.9.2-cell-copyright.patch Adds copyright to prolog of events and unit_masks files
oprof-kern-autoconf.patch Fixes m4 macros to not use obsolete kernel header file
oprof-start-race.patch Fixes race condition between --start-daemon and --start
oprofile-0.9.2-ppu-evt-chk.patch Ensure that only comptaible events are selected
oprofile-0.9.2-ppu-cycles-mincount.patch Set PPU CYCLES event minimum count to something sane
oprofile-0.9.2-remove_non_ppu_events.patch Remove all SPU events
oprof-user-spu.diff Add SPU profiling functionality
oprofile.spec SPEC file used to build oprofile rpms

To rebuild the Oprofile rpms you can install the source rpm and run the rpm_build.sh script:

                  rpm -ivh oprofile-0.9.2-0.3.src.rpm
                  rpm_build.sh --none --oprofile

or if you prefer to do it manually you have to:

  1. Download oprofile source tarball from Oprofile website: oprofile-0.9.2.tar.gz
    and copy it to /usr/redhat/SOURCES
  2. Copy the nine oprofile patches to /usr/redhat/SOURCES
  3. Copy the oprofile.spec file to /usr/redhat/SPECS
  4. Move to /usr/redhat/SPECS directory and type: 
         rpmbuild -ba oprofile.spec --target ppc