itrace

itrace is a processor level runtime tracing tool built around the Intel Processor Trace technology.

Record a trace with itrace record and convert it to Fuchsia format with itrace export.

Export to Perfetto to view a flamegraph of the trace in your browser. Select your portion of interest and copy the time range.

Decode the trace with itrace decode. Select a timerange of interest from the Perfetto flamegraph.

Setup

sudo apt update
sudo apt install linux-tools-generic
sudo apt install cmake
echo -1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid
./setup.py
sudo ./setup.py --install

Optionally, if you want to export and view the traces on Perfetto, you can build with the exporter. The exporter requires Rust and Cargo which can be installed here.

sudo apt install llvm clang libclang-dev
./setup.py --export
sudo ./setup.py --install

Acknowledgements

itrace relies heavily on other projects for its functionality. Thank you to these projects!

• perf handles all of the interfacing with Intel Processor Trace. itrace is really just a nice wrapper around perf.
• xed is used for decoding x86 instructions
• perf2perfetto is used for export perf's trace format to Fuchsia trace format for viewing on Perfetto