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SubjectRe: [PATCHSET 0/8] perf tools: Fix scalability problem on callchain merging (v4)
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Hi Ingo,

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 11:34:26 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> This is a new version of callchain improvement patchset. I found and
>> fixed bugs in the previous version. I verified that it produced
>> exactly same output before and after applying rbtree conversion patch
>> (#1). However after Frederic's new comm infrastructure patches are
>> applied it'd be little different.
>>
>> The patches are on 'perf/callchain-v4' branch in my tree
>>
>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/namhyung/linux-perf.git
>
> I pulled this into a test-branch and resolved the builtin-trace.c conflict
> with tip:master.
>
> I tried your new code out with Linus's testcase of a parallel kernel
> build:
>
> perf record -g -- make -j8 bzImage
>
> The 'perf record' session went mostly fine except for lost events:
>
> Kernel: arch/x86/boot/bzImage is ready (#25)
> [ perf record: Woken up 553 times to write data ]
> [ perf record: Captured and wrote 196.811 MB perf.data (~8598789 samples) ]
> Warning:
> Processed 2631982 events and lost 54 chunks!
>
> Check IO/CPU overload!
>
> So, for completeness I'll mention that perf fails in two ways here:
>
> - UI bug: it prints some scary warnings about 'IO/CPU overload' but
> does not give any idea what the user could do about it. At minimum it
> should print something about increasing --mmap-pages. It should also
> print the current value of --mmap-pages so that the user knows to what
> value to increase it ...
>
> - defaults bug: this isn't an extreme workload on an extreme box - it's
> a relatively bog standard system with 8 cores and 16 CPUs. The kernel
> build was mild as well, with -j8. So losing events in perf record is
> absolutely unacceptable. A solution might be to automatically increase
> the ring-buffer if -g is used, in expectation of a higher data rate.

Both look sensible. I'll try to cook patches for them.

>
> Once perf record was done I had the ~200 MB perf.data - and the 'perf
> report' session went much smoother than ever before: the analysis went
> very quickly, it finished within 10 seconds and displayed a nice progress
> bar. So this is entirely usable IMO.
>
> One small 'perf report' annoyance is that during the analysis passes
> missing symbol printouts flash in the TUI - without the user having a
> chance to read them. So those messages should either linger, or be
> displayed at a later stage, for example when the user is confronted with
> non-resolved symbols like:
>
> + 28.63% cc1 cc1 [.] 0x00000000006a92cb ◆
>
> that is the point where the message would be useful - but nothing
> indicates at all that this is an undesirable symbol entry and nothing
> helps the user what to do about it!
>
> A solution might be to display non-intrusive messages about non-resolved
> symbols when such a symbol is manipulated (its children are openened, or
> annotation is attempted).

Hmm.. I'll think about it more how to do it.

>
> Here there is a second annoyance: on the detailed screen the 'annotate'
> entry is simply missing when the symbol has not been resolved. If I hit
> 'a' on the symbol entry itself in the graph view, then sometimes
> annotation works - sometimes it does not and there's no UI feedback
> whatsoever why it's not working.
>
> I'm not suggesting to change the keyboard flow - that is very smooth - but
> display information about failed annotations in the status line at the
> bottom of the screen would be very useful. Remember: it's _always_ an UI
> bug if the user hits a key and absolutely nothing happens. At minimum a
> low-key, non-intrusive 'key X not bound' message should appear in the
> status line bottom. Deterministic action/reaction sequences are utterly
> important when interacting with computers.
>
> Anyway, very nice progress with the tree here!

Hehe, thanks!
Namhyung
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