spot(1)spot(1)NAMEspot - run a tool chain on an executable, and generate a website for
browsing the data
SYNOPSISspot [ options ] [ target target-args | -p pid ]
DESCRIPTION
The spot command runs a set of performance tools on the target applica‐
tion and renders the output as a set of hyperlinked webpages. There
are two ways that spot can be used:
spot-P pid
spot attaches to a running process and gathers data from the
running process using a variety of probes.
spot app params
The application is run multiple times, each time under a differ‐
ent probe. So it is necessary for the application to be able to
run multiple times without user intervention.
The webpages that spot produces record the following information (if it
is available).
System information
Information about the system which the experiment was collected
on
Build information
Information about how the application was built
Performance counter data
Performance counter events recorded by the CPU during the run of
the application. This data can be used to indicate the types of
events which are causing significant stall time.
Instruction frequency data
This indicates the mix of instructions executed by the applica‐
tion (SPARC only).
Time spent in code
This data is from the collect command which returns the amount
of time spent in the various routines. This data is rendered
using er_html.
Stall time profiles
The collect command is used to profile the application based on
the performance counter events that contribute the largest stall
time. The resulting profiles indicate where in the program the
stall events are occurring. This data is rendered using er_html.
Execution counts
This data indicates how often each routine is called, and also
how often each individual instruction in the routine is called
(SPARC only).
System-wide bandwidth utilization
Data on utilization of system-wide utilization of bandwidth for
all running processes. It is not possible to attribute bandwidth
to a particular process unless that process is the only one
active at the time. This data can only be collected if the user
has the appropriate permissions to access the performance coun‐
ters on a system-wide basis. (SPARC only).
Trap information
Data on the number of traps encountered over the run of the pro‐
gram. This information is only available if the user has the
appropriate permissions to access trapstat data (SPARC only).
If gnuplot is available on the path, then additional graphs will be
available that show the various events over time.
OPTIONS
If invoked with no arguments, print a usage message. If /bin/perl is
not installed on the system, fail with the message: "spot: Command not
found", even though it is perl, not spot that is missing. If the ver‐
sion of perl on the system is not recent enough, spot may fail with a
message about an undefined variable.
-c path
Specify a path for the Oracle Solaris Studio components used by
spot. If both Oracle Solaris Studio and spot are installed in
their default locations, spot will find the components it needs.
However, if either of them is installed in a different location,
then this option can be used to specify the path. This option
is also useful if the user wants to override the default com‐
piler and use a compiler installed in a location different from
the default one.
-D n Set the level of debug information to be printed. The default is
1. A setting of 0 means no output from spot, a setting of 2
means full debug information. The debug output will be available
in debug.log in the completed report.
-d directory
Place output from spot in a subdirectory of the specified direc‐
tory. If not specified, the default is to place the data in the
current directory.
-h Print help information.
-o name
Place the output from spot in the named subdirectory named
name<n> where n is the first name not in use. If the name is
specified, it may have any form, as long as the directory does
not exist at the time spot is invoked. If the name is not speci‐
fied then spot will default to using spot_run<n>
-P pid Attach spot to a running process and produce report.
-q Suppress all spot output. (Equivanlent to -D 0)
-T seconds
This option is only valid when spot is attaching to a running
process. It sets the number of seconds for which each of the
probes should be attached to the process. The default is 300
seconds (5 minutes).
-V Print the current version. Do not examine further arguments and
perform no further processing.
-v Print the current version and further detailed debugging infor‐
mation about the conversion being run. (Equivalent to -D 2)
-X This option will cause spot to try to collect extended informa‐
tion about the performance of the application. It will collect
hardware counter profiles of the application using those perfor‐
mance counters that have been identified by ripc as large con‐
tributors to the overall stall time. If possible, bandwidth and
trap data will also be collected; the user needs the appropriate
permissions for bandwidth and trap data to be collected.
SEE ALSOanalyzer(1), collect(1), er_archive(1), er_cp(1), er_export(1),
er_html(1), er_mv(1), er_print(1), er_rm(1), er_src(1), and the Perfor‐
mance Analyzer manual.
January 2007 spot(1)
