PROFILE(4D) Devices PROFILE(4D)

NAME

profile - DTrace profile interrupt provider

DESCRIPTION

The profile driver is a DTrace dynamic tracing provider that adds
time-based interrupt event sources that can be used as DTrace probes.


Each profile event source is a time-based interrupt firing every
fixed, specified time interval. You can use these probes to sample
some aspect of system state every unit time and the samples can then
be used to infer system behavior. If the sampling rate is high, or
the sampling time is long, an accurate inference is possible. By
using the DTrace facility to bind arbitrary actions to probes, you
can use the profile provider to sample practically anything in the
system. For example, you could sample the state of the current
thread, the CPU state, or the current machine instruction each time a
probe fires.


The profile driver is not a public interface and you access the
instrumentation offered by this provider through DTrace. Refer to the
Dynamic Tracing Guide for a description of the public documented
interfaces available for the DTrace facility and the probes offered
by the profile provider.

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(7) for a description of the following attributes:


+--------------------+-----------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|Interface Stability | Private |
+--------------------+-----------------+

SEE ALSO

dtrace(4D), attributes(7), dtrace(8)


Dynamic Tracing Guide:


https://illumos.org/books/dtrace/

December 10, 2017 PROFILE(4D)