Generate flame graph using FlameGraph goodies

Lately, I have been reading slideshare from brendan gregg on how to monitor stack in linux. An example would be this slide share. There is an interesting among his slide share using a few commands to generate the flame graph. This flame graph project can be found in his github project.

Today, we are trying flamegraph on my local system. A simple walk through using his great software. Okay, in one of his slide, he gave a few commands and I modified a bit from his original version. Remember I ran these command on my debian box.

 git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph  
 cd FlameGraph  
 perf record -F 99 -a -g -- sleep 30  
 perf script| ./stackcollapse-perf.pl | ./flamegraph.pl > perf.svg  

and in the terminal, output below.

 user@localhost:~$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph  
 Cloning into 'FlameGraph'...  
 remote: Counting objects: 50, done.  
 remote: Compressing objects: 100% (29/29), done.  
 remote: Total 50 (delta 24), reused 37 (delta 20), pack-reused 0  
 Unpacking objects: 100% (50/50), done.  
 Checking connectivity... done.  
 user@localhost:~$ cd FlameGraph  
 user@localhost:~/FlameGraph$ sudo perf record -F 99 -a -g -- sleep 30  
 /usr/bin/perf: line 24: exec: perf_4.0: not found  
 E: linux-tools-4.0 is not installed.  
 user@localhost:~/FlameGraph$ sudo perf record -F 99 -a -g -- sleep 30  
 [ perf record: Woken up 1 times to write data ]  
 [ perf record: Captured and wrote 1.719 MB perf.data (5082 samples) ]  
 user@localhost:~/FlameGraph$ perf script | ./stackcollapse-perf.pl | ./flamegraph.pl > perf.svg  
 failed to open perf.data: Permission denied  
 ERROR: No stack counts found  
 user@localhost:~/FlameGraph$ sudo perf script | ./stackcollapse-perf.pl | ./flamegraph.pl > perf.svg  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-3763.map, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-4908.map, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtCore.so.4.8.6, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0.4200.1, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-5995.map, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-2337.map, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-3012.map, continuing without symbols  
 no symbols found in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstplayback.so, maybe install a debug package?  
 Failed to open /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtGui.so.4.8.6, continuing without symbols  
 Failed to open /tmp/perf-19187.map, continuing without symbols  
 no symbols found in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmatroska.so, maybe install a debug package?  
 no symbols found in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstcoreelements.so, maybe install a debug package?  
 Failed to open /run/user/1000/orcexec.Sg4yUn, continuing without symbols  
 no symbols found in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstfaad.so, maybe install a debug package?  
 Failed to open /usr/bin/skype, continuing without symbols  
 no symbols found in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstlibav.so, maybe install a debug package?  
 user@localhost:~/FlameGraph$  

As you can see above, you need perf to be installed. perf is provided by this package, linux-tools-4.0 and you need root permission to run perf command. It will take a few seconds to collect the statistics and then you can again using the script to generate the svg. Now, you should be able to view the svg file using eof or gimp. See below for the flame graph generated in my workstation. :) Note, I have to change svg to jpg to upload to this blogger.