Problems with using gperftools on Mac OS X - c++

I have found several conflicting answers over this topic. This blog post requires libuwind, but that doesn't work on Mac OS X. I included #include <google/profiler.h> in my code, however my compiler (g++) could not find the library. I installed gperftools via homebrew. In addition, I found this stackoverflow question showing this:
Then I ran pprof to generate the output:
[hidden ~]$ pprof --text ./a.out cpu.profile
Using local file ./a.out.
Using local file cpu.profile.
Removing __sigtramp from all stack traces.
Total: 282 samples
107 37.9% 37.9% 107 37.9% 0x000000010d72229e
16 5.7% 43.6% 16 5.7% 0x000000010d721a5f
12 4.3% 47.9% 12 4.3% 0x000000010d721de8
...
Running that command (without any of the prior steps) gets me this:
[hidden]$ pprof --text ./a.out cpu.profile
Using remote profile at ./a.out.
Failed to get the number of symbols from http://cpu.profile/pprof/symbol
Why does it try to access an internet site on my machine and a local file on his/hers?
Attempting to link lib profiler as a dry run with g++ gets me:
[hidden]$ g++ -l libprofiler
ld: library not found for -llibprofiler
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
I have looked at the man pages, the help option text, the official online guide, blog posts, and many other sources.
I am so confused right now. Can someone help me use gperftools?
The result of my conversation with #osgx was this script. I tried to clean it up a bit. It likely contains quite a few unnecessary options too.

The blog post https://dudefrommangalore.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/profiling-c-code-using-google-performance-tools/ "Profiling C++ code using Google Performance Tools" 2012 by dudefrommangalore missed the essential step.
You should link your program (which you want to be profiled) with cpu profiler library of gperftools library.
Check official manual: http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/cpu_profiler.html, part "Linking in the Library"
add -lprofiler to the link-time step for your executable. (It's also probably possible to add in the profiler at run-time using LD_PRELOAD, but this isn't necessarily recommended.)
Second step is to collect the profile, run the code with profiling enabled. In linux world it was done by setting controlling environment variable CPUPROFILE before running:
CPUPROFILE=name_of_profile ./program_to_be_profiled
Third step is to use pprof (google-pprof in ubuntu world). Check that there is not-empty name_of_profile profile file generated; it there is no such file, pprof will try to do remote profile fetch (you see output of such try).
pprof ./program_to_be_profiled name_of_profile

First you need to run your program with profiling enabled.
This is usually first linking your program with libprofiler and then running it with CPUPROFILE=cpu.profile.
I.e.
$ CPUPROFILE=cpu.profile my_program
I think that later step is what you have been missing.
The program will create this cpu.profile file when it exits. And then you can use pprof (preferably from github.com/google/pprof) on it to visualize/analyze.

Related

No source file for Netaccel_link error on running program

I have an OCaml program that worked fine on Ubuntu 16 but when recompiled and run on Ubuntu 20 I get the following error:-
$ ocamldebug ./linearizer
OCaml Debugger version 4.08.1
(ocd) r
Loading program... done.
Time: 89534
Program end.
Uncaught exception: Sys_error "Illegal seek"
(ocd) b
Time: 89533 - pc: 624888 - module Netaccel_link
No source file for Netaccel_link.
I thought this was due to missing dev libraries but:-
$ sudo apt install libocamlnet-ocaml-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
libocamlnet-ocaml-dev is already the newest version (4.1.6-1build6).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded.
What setup step am I missing on Ubuntu 20?
This looks like a regression bug in libocamlnet and you should report an issue there or, I am a bit pessimistic that you will get any response, you can try to debug the issue yourself.
The problem that you are facing has nothing to do with missing libraries (they will be reported during installation or, if the package is broken, end up in linker errors). It may result, however, from some misconfiguration of the system. If that is true, then you're lucky as you can fix it yourself.
I will give you some advice that might help you in debugging this issue. For more, please try using discuss.ocaml.org as a more suitable media (SO doesn't favor this kind of a discussion and we might get deleted by admins).
The illegal seek exception is thrown when the seek operation is applied on a non-regular file, aka ESPIPE Unix error. So check your inputs. It could be that what was previously regarded as a file in Ubuntu is now a pipe or a socket.
Try to use ltrace or strace to pinpoint the culprit e.g.,
ltrace ./linearizer
or, if it overwhelms you, try strace
strace ./linearizer
Instead of using ocamldebug you can use plain gdb. You can use gdb's interfaces to provide the path to the source code (though most likely it won't work since ocamlnet is not compiled with debug information). I believe that it will give you a more meaningful backtrace.
Instead of using the system installation try using opam. Install your dependencies with opam and try older versions as well as newer versions of the OCaml compiler. Also, try different versions of ocamlnet. Ideally, try to reproduce the environment that used to work for you.
When nothing else works, you can use objdump -d and look at the disassembly of your binary. OCaml is using a pretty readable and intuitive name mangling scheme (<module_name>__<function_name>_<uid>), so you can easily find the source code (search for <module_name>.ml file and look for the <function_name> there)
Finally, just use docker or any other container to run your application. Consider switching from ocamlnet to something more modern and supported.

Build errors in cpprest sdk (casablanca) on Ubuntu 16.04

While searching for an HTTP client C++ based library, I have decided to use the casablanca -- so I needed to build it.
I'm running on Ubuntu 16.04.
While following the "common" build steps described here: How-to-build-for-Linux I have encountered a build error (when running the make command as the last operation of step 4).
The entire error output can be found here (now it is the last comment in the thread cpprestsdk-build-error#266).
Just to be sure my system has the needed build tools and libraries I performed the command mentioned in step 2 and this is the output:
--> Which means my system is "good to go".
So after I struggled it a little more, I have found "an alternative" way to build it:
I have downloaded the source code from here: Source Package: casablanca (2.8.0-2) [universe], and again, followed the same instructions STARTING FROM STEP 4 from the link mentioned in the question (How-to-build-for-Linux).
This time the make phase was successful !! (it is worth to mention that not all the unit tests that are recommended to be run on step 5 passed - I did not spend time trying to understand why...).
Went on and "copied-pasted" the complete sample provided at the bottom of the following link: cpprestsdk-Getting-Started-Tutorial.
Built the program with the following command (the program contained a single cpp file called main):
g++ -std=c++11 main.cpp -o myProg -lboost_system -lcrypto -lssl -lcpprest
Ran the program
./myProg
and it passed (there was output in the console saying:"Received response status code:200").
Would be glad to hear if you have encountered the same issue, or perhaps I did something wrong in my first attempt (or in any other step along the way).

gperftools - profile file not dumped

I've configured and built gpreftools. however, I can't seem to find the generated profile file of my program to display it.
I took the following actions:
Adding the -lprofiler linker flag to my .pro, building the program and the flag is added correctly at the linking stage.
QMAKE_LFLAGS += -lprofiler
Running with:
$ CPUPROFILE=/tmp/prof.out /path/to/executable
Executing:
$ pprof --gv /path/to/MyExe /tmp/prof.out
Then I get the following:
Failed to get profile: curl -s --max-time 90 'http:///pprof/profile?seconds=30' > /home/eslam/pprof/.tmp.MyExe.1509005857.: No such file or directory.
Anyone has a resolve on this?
Check that your program actually links to libprofiler.so. Some OSes (e.g. AFAIK some versions of ubuntu) do not actually add .so if none of it's symbols are actually used. E.g. ldd ./yourprogram should list libprofiler.so. If this does not happen, then you should prepend something like -Wl,--no-as-needed to your linker flags.
LD_PRELOAD method without rebuild
Besides passing -Wl,--no-as-needed,-lprofiler,--as-needed at build time mentioned by Eslam, you can also get it to work without modifying the build by passing the LD_PRELOAD option at runtime as:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libprofiler.so CPUPROFILE=prof.out ./main.out
You can find libprofiler.so easily with locate libprofiler.so.
See also: How can I profile C++ code running on Linux?
Tested in Ubuntu 18.04.

Need GLIBC debug information from rpmbuild of updated source

I'm working on RHEL WS 4.5.
I've obtained the glibc source rpm matching this system, opened it to get its contents using rpm2cpio.
Working in that tree, I've created a patch to mtrace.c (i want to add more stack backtrace levels) and incorporated it in the spec file and created a new set of RPMs including the debuginfo rpms.
I installed all of these on a test vm (created from the same RH base image) and can confirm that my changes are included.
But with more complex executions, I crash in mtrace.c ... but gdb can't find the debug information so I don't get line number info and I can't actually debug the failure.
Based on dates, I think I can confirm that the debug information is installed on the test system in /usr/src/debug/glibc-2.3.6/
I tried
sharedlibrary libc*
in gdb and it tells me the symbols are already loaded.
My test includes a locally built python and full symbols are found for python.
My sense is that perhaps glibc isn't being built under rpmbuild with debug enabled. I've reviewed the glibc.spec file and even built with
_enable_debug_packages
defined as 1 which looked like it might influence the result. My review of the configure scripts invoked during the rpmbuild build step didn't give me any hints.
Hmmmm .. just found /usr/lib/debug/lib/libc-2.3.4.so.debug
and /usr/lib/debug/lib/tls/i486/libc-2.3.4.so.debug
but both of these are reported as stripped by the file command.
It appears that you are installing non-matching RPMs:
/usr/src/debug/glibc-2.3.6
just found /usr/lib/debug/lib/libc-2.3.4.so.debug
There are not for the same version; there is no way they came from the same -debuginfo RPM.
both of these are reported as stripped by the file command.
These should not show as stripped. Either they were not built correctly, or your strip is busted.
Also note that you don't actually have to get all of this working to debug your problem. In the RPMBUILD directory, you should be able to find the glibc build directory, with full-debug libc.so.6. Just copy that library into your VM, and you wouldn't have to worry about the debuginfo RPM.
Try verifying that debug info for mtrace.c is indeed present. First see if the separate debug info for GLIBC knows about a compilation unit called mtrace.c:
$ eu-readelf -w /usr/lib/debug/lib64/libc-2.15.so.debug > t
$ grep mtrace t
name (strp) "mtrace.c"
name (strp) "mtrace"
1 0 0 0 mtrace.c
[10480] "mtrace.c"
[104bb] "mtrace"
[5052] symbol: mtrace, CUs: 446
Then see if GDB actually finds the source file from the glibc-debuginfo RPM:
(gdb) set pagination off
(gdb) start # pause your test program right after main()
(gdb) set logging on
Copying output to gdb.txt.
(gdb) info sources
Quit GDB then grep for mtrace in gdb.txt and you should find something like /usr/src/debug/glibc-2.15-a316c1f/malloc/mtrace.c
This works with GDB 7.4. I'm not sure the GDB version shipped with RHEL 4.5 supports all the command used above. Building upstream GDB from source is in fact easier than Python though.
When trying to add strack traces to mtrace, make sure you don't call malloc() directly or indirectly in the GLIBC malloc hooks.

Profiling C++ with Google Perf tools and Dynamic Libraries

I'm trying to profile a C++ application, that I did not write, to get a sense for where the major computation points are. I'm not a C++ expert and even less so C++ debugging/profiling expert. I believe I am running into a (common?) problem with dynamic libraries.
I compile link to Google CPU Profiler using (OS X, G++):
env LIBS=-lprofiler ./configure
make
make install
I then run profile the installed application (jags) with:
env CPUPROFILE=./jags.prof /usr/local/bin/jags regression.cmd
pprof /usr/local/bin/jags jags.prof
Unfortunately, I get the error:
pprof /usr/local/bin/jags jags.prof Can't exec "objdump":
No such file or directory at /usr/local/bin/pprof line 2833.
objdump /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/
Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libLAPACK.dylib: No such file or directory
The program dynamically links to libLAPACK.dylib. So prof does not seem to understand it (?). I thought about trying to statically link, but the documents associated with the program say that it is impossible to statically link in LAPACK or BLAS (two required libraries).
Is there a way to have the profiler ignore libLAPACK? I'm okay if it doesn't sample within libLAPACK. Or how might I get profiling to work?
This error was caused by jags being a shell script, that subsequently called profilable code.
pprof /usr/local/bin/REAL_EXEC jags.prof
fixes the problem.
I don't see a clean way to do it, but maybe there's a hacky workaround -- what happens if you hack the pprof perl script (or better a copy thereof;-), line 2834, so that instead of calling error it emits the message and then does return undef;?
If you're profiling on OSX, the Shark tool is really great as well. It's very simple to use, and has worked out of the box for me when I've tried it.