lttng-calibrate(1)
==================


NAME
----
lttng-calibrate - Quantify LTTng overhead


SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
*lttng* ['linkgenoptions:(GENERAL OPTIONS)'] *calibrate*


DESCRIPTION
-----------
The `lttng calibrate` commands quantifies the overhead of LTTng tracers.

The `lttng calibrate` command can be used to find out the combined
average overhead of the LTTng tracers and the instrumentation mechanisms
used. This overhead can be calibrated in terms of time or using any of
the PMU performance counter available on the system.

For now, the only implemented calibration is the Linux kernel function
instrumentation (_kretprobes_).


Calibrate Linux kernel function instrumentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an example, we use an i7 processor with 4 general-purpose PMU
registers. This information is available by issuing `dmesg`, looking
for `generic registers`.

The following sequence of commands gathers a trace executing a kretprobe
hooked on an empty function, gathering PMU counters LLC
(Last Level Cache) misses information (use `lttng add-context --list` to
get the list of available PMU counters).

[role="term"]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
lttng create calibrate-function
lttng enable-event calibrate --kernel \
                             --function=lttng_calibrate_kretprobe
lttng add-context --kernel --type=perf:cpu:LLC-load-misses \
                           --type=perf:cpu:LLC-store-misses \
                           --type=perf:cpu:LLC-prefetch-misses
lttng start

for a in $(seq 1 10); do
    lttng calibrate --kernel --function
done

lttng destroy
babeltrace $(ls -1drt ~/lttng-traces/calibrate-function-* | tail -n 1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The output from man:babeltrace(1) can be saved to a text file and
opened in a spreadsheet (for example, in LibreOffice) to focus on the
per-PMU counter delta between consecutive `calibrate_entry` and
`calibrate_return` events. Note that these counters are per-CPU, so
scheduling events would need to be present to account for migration
between CPUs. Therefore, for calibration purposes, only events staying
on the same CPU must be considered.

Here's an example of the average result, for the i7, on 10 samples:

[width="40%",options="header"]
|=============================================================
| PMU counter                | Average   | Standard deviation
| `perf_LLC_load_misses`     | 5.0       | 0.577
| `perf_LLC_store_misses`    | 1.6       | 0.516
| `perf_LLC_prefetch_misses` | 9.0       | 14.742
|=============================================================

As we can notice, the load and store misses are relatively stable across
runs (their standard deviation is relatively low) compared to the
prefetch misses. We could conclude from this information that LLC load
and store misses can be accounted for quite precisely, but prefetches
within a function seems to behave too erratically (not much causality
link between the code executed and the CPU prefetch activity) to be
accounted for.


include::common-cmd-options-head.txt[]


Domain
~~~~~~
One of:

option:-k, option:--kernel::
    Quantify LTTng overhead in the Linux kernel domain.

option:-u, option:--userspace::
    Quantify LTTng overhead in the user space domain.


Calibration
~~~~~~~~~~~
option:--function::
    Use dynamic function entry/return probes to calibrate (default).
+
This option requires the option:--kernel option.


include::common-cmd-help-options.txt[]


include::common-cmd-footer.txt[]


SEE ALSO
--------
man:lttng(1)