perf record --off-cpu: Parse off-cpu event
authorHoward Chu <howardchu95@gmail.com>
Thu, 1 May 2025 02:28:00 +0000 (19:28 -0700)
committerArnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Tue, 6 May 2025 00:48:02 +0000 (21:48 -0300)
commit0f72027bb9fb77a2b2ea7d73e6d58bb9c0efb1e8
tree902674f6c9149e8986687ed87ce874f6767c73a2
parent671e943452b18001fe6286d0538825089400eed8
perf record --off-cpu: Parse off-cpu event

Parse the off-cpu event using parse_event(), as bpf-output.

Call evlist__enable_evsel() on off-cpu event. This fixes the inability
to collect direct off-cpu samples on a workload, as reported by Arnaldo
Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>.

The reason being, workload sets enable_on_exec instead of calling
evlist__enable(), but off-cpu event does not attach to an executable and
execve won't be called, so the fds from perf_event_open() are not
enabled.

no-inherit should be set to 1, here's the reason:

We update the BPF perf_event map for direct off-cpu sample dumping (in
following patches), it executes as follows:

bpf_map_update_value()
 bpf_fd_array_map_update_elem()
  perf_event_fd_array_get_ptr()
   perf_event_read_local()

In perf_event_read_local(), there is:

int perf_event_read_local(struct perf_event *event, u64 *value,
  u64 *enabled, u64 *running)
{
...
/*
 * It must not be an event with inherit set, we cannot read
 * all child counters from atomic context.
 */
if (event->attr.inherit) {
ret = -EOPNOTSUPP;
goto out;
}

Which means no-inherit has to be true for updating the BPF perf_event
map.

Moreover, for bpf-output events, we primarily want a system-wide event
instead of a per-task event.

The reason is that in BPF's bpf_perf_event_output(), BPF uses the CPU
index to retrieve the perf_event file descriptor it outputs to.

Making a bpf-output event system-wide naturally satisfies this
requirement by mapping CPU appropriately.

Suggested-by: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Howard Chu <howardchu95@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Gautam Menghani <gautam@linux.ibm.com>
Tested-by: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
Acked-by: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Cc: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
Cc: Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: James Clark <james.clark@linaro.org>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>
Cc: Kan Liang <kan.liang@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241108204137.2444151-4-howardchu95@gmail.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250501022809.449767-3-howardchu95@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
tools/perf/builtin-record.c
tools/perf/util/bpf_off_cpu.c
tools/perf/util/evsel.c