The targets of profiling

An example of profiling application demonstrates how to profile a program. Besides it, perf can also profile targets based on other qualifications:






























Target Option
Program “perf record program”.
Process “perf record -p pid”. Pid is process ID.
Thread “perf record -t tid”. Tid is thread ID.
User “perf record -t uid”. Uid can be user ID or name.
CPU “perf record -C cpuid”. Cpuid the CPU ID.
System-wide “perf record -a”. Profile all CPUs in the system. This is the default behaviour.

More words about -a option: Since it is the default behavior when no target is designated, “perf record -a“ is synonym to “perf record“. A common example is to profile the system in 10 seconds: 

  1. # perf record -F 99 -a sleep 10

-F option denotes the sampling frequency. Use an odd number, such as 99, is to avoid lockstep sampling (Please refer perf CPU Sampling and What is lockstep sampling?).