System information

106 System Analysis and Tuning Guide
8.2 Installation and Requirements
In order to make use of OProfile, install the oprofile package. OProfile works on
IA-64, AMD64, s390, and PPC64 processors.
It is useful to install the *-debuginfo package for the respective application you
want to profile. If you want to profile the Kernel, you need the debuginfo package
as well.
8.3 Available OProfile Utilities
OProfile contains several utilities to handle the profiling process and its profiled data.
The following list is a short summary of programms used in this chapter:
opannotate
Outputs annotated source or assembly listings mixed with profile information.
opcontrol
Controls the profiling sessions (start or stop), dumps profile data, and sets up pa-
rameters.
ophelp
Lists available events with short descriptions.
opimport
Converts sample database files from a foreign binary format to the native format.
opreport
Generates reports from profiled data.
8.4 Using OProfile
It is possible with OProfile to profile both Kernel and applications. When profiling
the Kernel, tell OProfile where to find the vmlinuz* file. Use the --vmlinux
option and point it to vmlinuz* (usually in /boot). If you need to profile Ker-
nel modules, OProfile does this by default. However, make sure you read http://
oprofile.sourceforge.net/doc/kernel-profiling.html.