perf Cheat Sheet

CLI Usage

perf top

Allows you to monitor processes

perf top             # Shows incomplete details!!!
perf top -a          # Shows usage per symbol on all CPUs
perf top -a -g       # Shows usage with call-graphs on everything

perf top -a -ns comm,dso    # Show usage per process+symbol tuples

perf stat

Allows you to monitor breakpoints

perf list            # Print list of supported 

perf stat -a sleep 5                            # Overview over everything
perf stat -e syscalls:* -a <cmd>                # Overview over all system calls
perf stat -e ext4:ext4_request_inode -a <cmd>   # Counter for a single ext4 metric

perf record

Creating perf trace files

 perf record -F 99 -a -g -- sleep 60
 perf script > out.perf

Afterwards post-processing into collapsed stacks and flame graphs is possible: see https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph.