Manual: runqlat-bpfcc

runqlat(8)				   System Manager's Manual				  runqlat(8)

NAME
       runqlat - Run queue (scheduler) latency as a histogram.

SYNOPSIS
       runqlat [-h] [-T] [-m] [-P] [--pidnss] [-L] [-p PID] [interval] [count]

DESCRIPTION
       This  measures the time a task spends waiting on a run queue (or equivalent scheduler data structure)
       for a turn on-CPU, and shows this time as a histogram. This time should be small, but a task may need
       to wait its turn due to CPU load. The higher the CPU load, the longer a task will generally  need  to
       wait its turn.

       This tool measures two types of run queue latency:

       1.  The	time  from  a  task  being enqueued on a run queue to its context switch and execution. This
       traces ttwu_do_wakeup(), wake_up_new_task() -> finish_task_switch() with either raw  tracepoints	 (if
       supported) or kprobes and instruments the run queue latency after a voluntary context switch.

       2.  The	time  from  when a task was involuntary context switched and still in the runnable state, to
       when it next executed. This is instrumented from finish_task_switch() alone.

       This tool uses in-kernel eBPF maps for storing timestamps and the histogram, for efficiency.  Despite
       this, the overhead of this tool may become significant for some workloads: see the OVERHEAD section.

       This  works by tracing various kernel scheduler functions using dynamic tracing, and will need updat‐
       ing to match any changes to these functions.

       Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

REQUIREMENTS
       CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

OPTIONS
       -h     Print usage message.

       -T     Include timestamps on output.

       -m     Output histogram in milliseconds.

       -P     Print a histogram for each PID.

       --pidnss
	      Print a histogram for each PID namespace (short for PID namespaces). For container analysis.

       -L     Print a histogram for each thread ID.

       -p PID Only show this PID (filtered in kernel for efficiency).

       interval
	      Output interval, in seconds.

       count  Number of outputs.

EXAMPLES
       Summarize run queue latency as a histogram:
	      # runqlat

       Print 1 second summaries, 10 times:
	      # runqlat 1 10

       Print 1 second summaries, using milliseconds as units for the histogram, and include timestamps on
       output:
	      # runqlat -mT 1

       Trace PID 186 only, 1 second summaries:
	      # runqlat -P 185 1

FIELDS
       usecs  Microsecond range

       msecs  Millisecond range

       count  How many times a task event fell into this range

       distribution
	      An ASCII bar chart to visualize the distribution (count column)

OVERHEAD
       This traces scheduler functions, which can become very frequent. While eBPF has	very  low  overhead,
       and  this  tool	uses in-kernel maps for efficiency, the frequency of scheduler events for some work‐
       loads may be high enough that the overhead of this tool becomes significant. Measure in a  lab  envi‐
       ronment to quantify the overhead before use.

SOURCE
       This is from bcc.

	      https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

       Also  look  in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, out‐
       put, and commentary for this tool.

OS
       Linux

STABILITY
       Unstable - in development.

AUTHOR
       Brendan Gregg

SEE ALSO
       runqlen(8), runqslower(8), pidstat(1)

USER COMMANDS					 2016-02-07					  runqlat(8)