Other profilers: OProfile and gprof

These two statistical profilers predate perf. They are both subsets of the functionality of perf, but they are still quite popular. I will mention them only briefly.

OProfile is a kernel profiler that started out in 2002. Originally, it had its own kernel sampling code, but recent versions use the perf_events infrastructure for that purpose. There is more information about it at http://oprofile.sourceforge.net. OProfile consists of a kernel-space component and a user space daemon and analysis commands.

OProfile needs these two kernel options to be enabled:

  • CONFIG_PROFILING in General setup | Profiling support
  • CONFIG_OPROFILE in General setup | OProfile system profiling

If you are using the Yocto Project, the user-space ...

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