Re: [patch] Performance Counters for Linux, v4

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Tue Dec 16 2008 - 07:22:57 EST


On Sun 2008-12-14 22:28:29, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> We are pleased to announce the v4 release of our performance counters
> subsystem implementation. The kernel changes can be picked up from:
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip.git perfcounters/core
>
> (also in the master branch. There's also a kernel patch attached
> below.)
>
> The biggest new feature in this release is the implementation of
> "performance counter inheritance" for the per task counters: the ability
> to extend performance counters to cover the execution of child tasks
> too, transparently and automatically - following them to other CPUs.
>
> This can be used to monitor a hierarchy of tasks without stopping them
> (or impacting them in any observable way), and extending that monitoring
> to all child tasks as well.
>
> We've written a new utility: 'timec', which takes advantage of this new
> kernel capability:
>
> http://redhat.com/~mingo/perfcounters/timec.c
>
> 'timec' works like /usr/bin/time, but it extends the dimension of "time"
> with all the metrics that hardware and software performance counters are
> able to capture.

Hmm, if I timec some setuid program, what happens?

Performance counters seem like great tool to pull secret keys out of
other processes :-).
Pavel
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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