[Savannah-register-public] [task #9952] Submission of axis_profile

[Jesper Nilsson]

URL:
  <http://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?9952>

                 Summary: Submission of axis_profile
                 Project: Savannah Administration
            Submitted by: antijn
            Submitted on: Mon 07 Dec 2009 02:07:43 PM GMT
         Should Start On: Mon 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 AM GMT
   Should be Finished on: Thu 17 Dec 2009 12:00:00 AM GMT
                Category: Project Approval
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

A new project has been registered at Savannah 
This project account will remain inactive until a site admin approves or
discards the registration.


= Registration Administration =

While this item will be useful to track the registration process, *approving
or discarding the registration must be done using the specific Group
Administration
<https://savannah.nongnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10406> page*,
accessible only to site administrators, effectively *logged as site
administrators* (superuser):

* Group Administration
<https://savannah.nongnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10406>


= Registration Details =

* Name: *axis_profile*
* System Name:  *axis-profile*
* Type: non-GNU software & documentation
* License: GNU General Public License v2 or later

----

==== Description: ====
Simple utility that collects current program counter data from a specially
modified Linux kernel at a set rate and compares this to all debug symbols in
the kernel and optionally any user space programs or libraries.

Currently, the kernel modifications (SYSTEM_PROFILER=y) exist only for the
Axis Communications CRIS ports of Linux in the mainline version  of the Linux
kernel.

Written in C, but uses some external programs via system(3) (expect, wget and
one of objdump, nm, readelf).

The utility should be possible run on any operating system with these tools
installed.

We've found no simlilar program available, most Linux kernel architectures
have support for profiling via other means, and userspace applications uses
toolchain support for profiling (gprof) which is a more intrusive solution
(toolchain support needed, profiled code runs slower)

Advantages of doing it this way is the minor changes needed in the kernel,
the light weight nature of the profiling (it doesn't cost much to copy a PC to
a circular memory buffer).

It can also give profiling info for all levels of the system at the same time
(kernel, modules, libraries, and userspace programs)

The downside is that the profiling information is not exact, but represents
an average.
Some code, which is triggered by the timer interrupt used for polling the PC
will never be active when the polling occurs, some interrupts may have higher
priority.
Selfmodifying code or any other code that does not have any debug symbols
(such as library trampolines) will not be attributed correctly either.


==== Other Software Required: ====
External dependencies:

Linux kernel + GPL + http://www.kernel.org
expect + free + http://expect.nist.gov
wget + GPL + http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
binutils + GPL + http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/


==== Tarball URL: ====
http://www.jni.nu/~jesper/axis_profile-3.0.tar.gz






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