Re: performance counter ~0.4% error finding retired instructioncount

From: Paul Mackerras
Date: Sun Jun 28 2009 - 22:12:42 EST


I can think of three ways to eliminate the PLT resolver overhead on
execvp:

(1) Do execvp on a non-executable file first to get execvp resolved:

char tmpnam[16];
int fd;
char *args[1];

strcpy(tmpname, "/tmp/perfXXXXXX");
fd = mkstemp(tmpname);
if (fd >= 0) {
args[1] = NULL;
execvp(tmpname, args);
close(fd);
unlink(tmpname);
}
enable_counters();
execvp(prog, argv);

(2) Look up execvp in glibc and call it directly:

int (*execptr)(const char *, char *const []);

execptr = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "execvp");
enable_counters();
(*execptr)(prog, argv);

(3) Resolve the executable path ourselves and then invoke the execve
system call directly:

char *execpath;

execpath = search_path(getenv("PATH"), prog);
enable_counters();
syscall(NR_execve, execpath, argv, envp);

(4) Same as (1), but rely on "" being an invalid program name for
execvp:

execvp("", argv);
enable_counters();
execvp(prog, argv);

What do you guys think? Does any of these appeal more than the
others? I'm leaning towards (4) myself.

Paul.
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