profiler(1M) —

NAME

profiler: prfld, prfstat, prfdc, prfsnap, prfpr − UNIX kernel profiler

SYNOPSIS

/etc/prfld [ system_namelist ]
/etc/prfstat on
/etc/prfstat off
/etc/prfdc file [ period [ off_hour ] ]
/etc/prfsnap file
/etc/prfpr file [ cutoff [ system_namelist ] ]

DESCRIPTION

The prfld, prfstat, prfdc, prfsnap, and prfpr routines form a system of programs to facilitate an activity study of the UNIX operating system.

The prfld program is used to initialize the recording mechanism in the system. It generates a table containing the starting address of each system subroutine as extracted from system_namelist.

The prfstat program is used to enable or disable the sampling mechanism. Profiler overhead is less than 1% as calculated for 500 text addresses. Prfstat will also reveal the number of text addresses being measured.

The prfdc and prfsnap programs perform the data collection function of the profiler by copying the current value of all the text address counters to a file where the data can be analyzed. Prfdc will store the counters into file every period minutes and will turn off at off_hour (valid values for off_hour are 0−24). Prfsnap collects data at the time of invocation only, appending the counter values to file.

The prfpr program formats the data collected by prfdc or prfsnap. Each text address is converted to the nearest text symbol (as found in system_namelist) and is printed if the percent activity for that range is greater than cutoff.

FILES

/dev/prfinterface to profile data and text addresses
/unixdefault for system namelist file

ADDED VALUE

This entry, supplied by SunSoft, Inc., contains enhancements to UNIX System V.