perfsuite-users

[PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[<ol...@ec...>]

I'm trying to do some performance analysis on a quad-processor Intel Xeon
1.80Ghz machine. I've spent nearly the last two weeks trying to build a
configuration input file for perfsuite for this machine and psconfig refuses to
run because it detects a problem with the tDOM installation. I've done
absolutely everything I can to try and install tDOM properly, but it just will
not work correctly and the documentation for that software package is absolutely
horrible, so I have no idea how to fix it.


What I would like to know is, is there an easy way to build a configuration file
*without* using psconfig? If not, is there some documentation about how the
configuration files are structured, because at this point it would be much
easier/faster to just write the XML file myself by hand. (An example
configuration file *without* PAPI would be wonderful to look at). Thank you for
any help you can provide.


- Tyler Olsen

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Re: [PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[Rick K. <rk...@nc...>]

Tyler - hopefully it is simple to get you past this hurdle, although
as you point out, documentation for psconfig is lacking (sorry).

In general, psconfig isn't really necessary to do performance measurement
with psrun or the API, whether you have PAPI or not.  If the installation
completes successfully, "psrun <somecommand>" should run without errors,
and you should be able to use psprocess on the resulting XML document
to view the data.  If the XML doc contains profiling data, you'll
also have to supply the name of the executable to psprocess, with the
option -e.

Alternate XML config files, including samples without PAPI, should
be installed in the directory PREFIX/share/perfsuite/xml/pshwpc,
and there is a sample config file called "profil.xml" that might
help out here.  You might try:

  psrun -c profil.xml a.out
  psprocess -e a.out yourxmlfile.xml

You might need to supply the full path to profil.xml for things to
work properly with your install.

Again, use of psconfig is completely optional and not necessary.
However, there isn't enough info here to see if in fact your tDOM
install isn't correct.  If it isn't, then psprocess will have problems
(probably will not be able to find/load tDOM).  psrun doesn't use
tDOM, so the use of an alternate XML config is independent of tDOM.

The INSTALL file has some information about install/build of tDOM and
use of "configure" that might help see what might be the problem as
well.  If still stuck, then some sample error output might help and
also the exact configure line you used (it should be stored in 
config.log).

Hope this helps track things down,

Rick

On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 ol...@ec... wrote:

> I'm trying to do some performance analysis on a quad-processor Intel Xeon
> 1.80Ghz machine. I've spent nearly the last two weeks trying to build a
> configuration input file for perfsuite for this machine and psconfig refuses to
> run because it detects a problem with the tDOM installation. I've done
> absolutely everything I can to try and install tDOM properly, but it just will
> not work correctly and the documentation for that software package is absolutely
> horrible, so I have no idea how to fix it.
> 
> 
> What I would like to know is, is there an easy way to build a configuration file
> *without* using psconfig? If not, is there some documentation about how the
> configuration files are structured, because at this point it would be much
> easier/faster to just write the XML file myself by hand. (An example
> configuration file *without* PAPI would be wonderful to look at). Thank you for
> any help you can provide.
> 
> 
> - Tyler Olsen

Re: [PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[<ol...@ec...>]

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately I have already tried what you mentioned and
had no luck. First of all, the "profil.xml" file contains the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ps_hwpc_profile class="null">
  <!-- ==========================================================
       This is a configuration file that can be used to ask for
       profiling, based on profil().

       $Id: profil.xml,v 1.3 2003/12/27 14:23:51 rkufrin Exp $
       ========================================================== -->
</ps_hwpc_profile>


It is exactly the same as the "null.xml" file (using Perfsuite-0.6.1 by the
way). And if we try to use any of the other config files (all prefixed with
papi) psrun will refuse to execute because the kernel we are running does not
have PAPI patched to it.


So really, we are in a situation where we have no valid config files to use and
are unable to build our own config files. I've spent nearly 2 days trying to
build tDOM and I have read all the documentation provided with it, but no matter
what I've tried it still builds incorrectly. If there are any other general
config files that may be laying around somewhere (especially for Xeon) that do
*not* use PAPI or a guide somewhere to explain the format of the config file so
we could build one by hand, it would really help us out. Thanks once again.


- Tyler


Quoting Rick Kufrin <rk...@nc...>:

> Tyler - hopefully it is simple to get you past this hurdle, although
> as you point out, documentation for psconfig is lacking (sorry).
> 
> In general, psconfig isn't really necessary to do performance measurement
> with psrun or the API, whether you have PAPI or not.  If the installation
> completes successfully, "psrun <somecommand>" should run without errors,
> and you should be able to use psprocess on the resulting XML document
> to view the data.  If the XML doc contains profiling data, you'll
> also have to supply the name of the executable to psprocess, with the
> option -e.
> 
> Alternate XML config files, including samples without PAPI, should
> be installed in the directory PREFIX/share/perfsuite/xml/pshwpc,
> and there is a sample config file called "profil.xml" that might
> help out here.  You might try:
> 
>   psrun -c profil.xml a.out
>   psprocess -e a.out yourxmlfile.xml
> 
> You might need to supply the full path to profil.xml for things to
> work properly with your install.
> 
> Again, use of psconfig is completely optional and not necessary.
> However, there isn't enough info here to see if in fact your tDOM
> install isn't correct.  If it isn't, then psprocess will have problems
> (probably will not be able to find/load tDOM).  psrun doesn't use
> tDOM, so the use of an alternate XML config is independent of tDOM.
> 
> The INSTALL file has some information about install/build of tDOM and
> use of "configure" that might help see what might be the problem as
> well.  If still stuck, then some sample error output might help and
> also the exact configure line you used (it should be stored in 
> config.log).
> 
> Hope this helps track things down,
> 
> Rick
> 
> On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 ol...@ec... wrote:
> 
> > I'm trying to do some performance analysis on a quad-processor Intel Xeon
> > 1.80Ghz machine. I've spent nearly the last two weeks trying to build a
> > configuration input file for perfsuite for this machine and psconfig
> refuses to
> > run because it detects a problem with the tDOM installation. I've done
> > absolutely everything I can to try and install tDOM properly, but it just
> will
> > not work correctly and the documentation for that software package is
> absolutely
> > horrible, so I have no idea how to fix it.
> > 
> > 
> > What I would like to know is, is there an easy way to build a configuration
> file
> > *without* using psconfig? If not, is there some documentation about how
> the
> > configuration files are structured, because at this point it would be
> much
> > easier/faster to just write the XML file myself by hand. (An example
> > configuration file *without* PAPI would be wonderful to look at). Thank you
> for
> > any help you can provide.
> > 
> > 
> > - Tyler Olsen
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[Rick K. <rk...@nc...>]

Tyler,

First of all, apologies for delay in my reply.  I'm currently on travel
and not able to read or respond as quickly as I'd prefer, so thanks
for your patience.

It's possible that there are a couple of things going on here, or rather
*not* going on.  It does seem as if tDOM is a roadblock from what you
report.  An improper tDOM install will prevent psprocess (or psconfig,
as you note from your original message) from being able to work with
either the input (XML config) or output (perf measurement) documents
for psrun.

Although I'm not certain, it seems as though the "profil.xml" file as you 
show does not result in a psrun runtime error, although all others do, 
since they rely on PAPI.  If you receive an XML output file when using 
profil.xml and psrun on your program, then that likely means that psrun
itself is OK - the output document should contain profiling samples if
so.  Unfortunately, psprocess (and therefore tDOM) would be required
to map the samples in the XML doc to source code lines for the output
to be of much use.

Can you verify that XML is output when you run psrun with the profil.xml 
config?

If the psrun/profil.xml combination does produce output, then I think
that points again to tDOM being the missing part in your install.
I'd be happy to help you with the tDOM build, probably off-list is
best.  Let me know if that might help (I am still on travel, although
will check more frequently).

I have thought recently that providing RPMs for x86/x86-64/ia64 tDOM
might make it easier for people to install and use PerfSuite and avoid
this type of problem, any feedback is welcome.

Rick

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 ol...@ec... wrote:

> Thanks for replying. Unfortunately I have already tried what you mentioned and
> had no luck. First of all, the "profil.xml" file contains the following:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
> <ps_hwpc_profile class="null">
>   <!-- ==========================================================
>        This is a configuration file that can be used to ask for
>        profiling, based on profil().
> 
>        $Id: profil.xml,v 1.3 2003/12/27 14:23:51 rkufrin Exp $
>        ========================================================== -->
> </ps_hwpc_profile>
> 
> 
> It is exactly the same as the "null.xml" file (using Perfsuite-0.6.1 by the
> way). And if we try to use any of the other config files (all prefixed with
> papi) psrun will refuse to execute because the kernel we are running does not
> have PAPI patched to it.
> 
> 
> So really, we are in a situation where we have no valid config files to use and
> are unable to build our own config files. I've spent nearly 2 days trying to
> build tDOM and I have read all the documentation provided with it, but no matter
> what I've tried it still builds incorrectly. If there are any other general
> config files that may be laying around somewhere (especially for Xeon) that do
> *not* use PAPI or a guide somewhere to explain the format of the config file so
> we could build one by hand, it would really help us out. Thanks once again.
> 
> 
> - Tyler

Re: [PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[<ol...@ec...>]

Hey no problem, I appreciate your willingness to help. Well I managed to make 
some good progress and I got tDOM installed correctly. In fact, tDOM was 
installed correctly the entire time but I had set the --with-tdom=TDOM_PATH 
option in ./configure incorrectly which was causing PerfSuite to not find the 
files it needed.

psrun does work fine with profil.xml, but it doesn't report anything useful. 
The only thing it tells us is the processor, it's cache configuration, etc. 
and nothing about instruction counts, cache miss rates, or other profiling 
information. Anyway with tDOM installed correctly I enthusiasticly went to run 
psconfig to create our own configuration, when it spit out an error message:

> ERROR: Unable to find PAPI

Which I thought was completely optional. But I installed PAPI on my machine 
anyway (without patching the kernel, because I don't have the priveledges to 
do so) and re-configured and installed PerfSuite with the --with-papi=PAPI_DIR 
option, but it still did not work.

Anyway for the time being this project is being due to being a busy grad-
student, but I'll probably pick it back up sometime this summer when I have 
more free-time. In regards for making distrobution specific packages (RPMs, 
DEB, etc) I'd love to see that happen. I know on SourceForge you can place 
help wanted ads (look in the Admin section and it should be there somewher) 
and see if there are any OSS developers who can help you package it. (I'm 
assuming you don't have the time to do it yourself). I'd like to help, but I'm 
far too busy right now and I've never created packages for any of the programs 
I've written, although I'll need to learn how to soon for another OSS project 
I've been working on for over 9 months. :)

Thanks once again for all your help.


- Tyler


Quoting Rick Kufrin <rk...@nc...>:

> Tyler,
> 
> First of all, apologies for delay in my reply.  I'm currently on travel
> and not able to read or respond as quickly as I'd prefer, so thanks
> for your patience.
> 
> It's possible that there are a couple of things going on here, or rather
> *not* going on.  It does seem as if tDOM is a roadblock from what you
> report.  An improper tDOM install will prevent psprocess (or psconfig,
> as you note from your original message) from being able to work with
> either the input (XML config) or output (perf measurement) documents
> for psrun.
> 
> Although I'm not certain, it seems as though the "profil.xml" file as you 
> show does not result in a psrun runtime error, although all others do, 
> since they rely on PAPI.  If you receive an XML output file when using 
> profil.xml and psrun on your program, then that likely means that psrun
> itself is OK - the output document should contain profiling samples if
> so.  Unfortunately, psprocess (and therefore tDOM) would be required
> to map the samples in the XML doc to source code lines for the output
> to be of much use.
> 
> Can you verify that XML is output when you run psrun with the profil.xml 
> config?
> 
> If the psrun/profil.xml combination does produce output, then I think
> that points again to tDOM being the missing part in your install.
> I'd be happy to help you with the tDOM build, probably off-list is
> best.  Let me know if that might help (I am still on travel, although
> will check more frequently).
> 
> I have thought recently that providing RPMs for x86/x86-64/ia64 tDOM
> might make it easier for people to install and use PerfSuite and avoid
> this type of problem, any feedback is welcome.
> 
> Rick
> 
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 ol...@ec... wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for replying. Unfortunately I have already tried what you mentioned
> and
> > had no luck. First of all, the "profil.xml" file contains the following:
> > 
> > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
> > <ps_hwpc_profile class="null">
> >   <!-- ==========================================================
> >        This is a configuration file that can be used to ask for
> >        profiling, based on profil().
> > 
> >        $Id: profil.xml,v 1.3 2003/12/27 14:23:51 rkufrin Exp $
> >        ========================================================== -->
> > </ps_hwpc_profile>
> > 
> > 
> > It is exactly the same as the "null.xml" file (using Perfsuite-0.6.1 by
> the
> > way). And if we try to use any of the other config files (all prefixed
> with
> > papi) psrun will refuse to execute because the kernel we are running does
> not
> > have PAPI patched to it.
> > 
> > 
> > So really, we are in a situation where we have no valid config files to 
use
> and
> > are unable to build our own config files. I've spent nearly 2 days trying
> to
> > build tDOM and I have read all the documentation provided with it, but no
> matter
> > what I've tried it still builds incorrectly. If there are any other
> general
> > config files that may be laying around somewhere (especially for Xeon) 
that
> do
> > *not* use PAPI or a guide somewhere to explain the format of the config
> file so
> > we could build one by hand, it would really help us out. Thanks once
> again.
> > 
> > 
> > - Tyler
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide
> Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users.
> Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now.
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Re: [PerfSuite-users] Problem with psconfig, workaround for building a config file?

[Rick K. <rk...@nc...>]

Tyler - well, it seems that you've already made progress which is
great news.  Thanks again for the patience.  I just have a couple
of comments that might help clarify a thing or two:

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 ol...@ec... wrote:

> In fact, tDOM was 
> installed correctly the entire time but I had set the --with-tdom=TDOM_PATH 
> option in ./configure incorrectly which was causing PerfSuite to not find the 
> files it needed.

I see.  This happens pretty frequently, usually it's the trailing "/lib"
portion of the path that people leave out when configuring PerfSuite.
This might be something that should be changed within the configure
itself if it continues to trip people up.  I'm glad to hear you got
it working.

> 
> psrun does work fine with profil.xml, but it doesn't report anything useful. 
> The only thing it tells us is the processor, it's cache configuration, etc. 
> and nothing about instruction counts, cache miss rates, or other profiling 
> information.

Without kernel support for accessing the performance counters, it's
not possible to get things like cache miss counts, etc.  On x86/Linux,
the kernel support comes from the perfctr patch, which is in turn
used by PAPI as you know.  So I would never expect an unpatched
x86 kernel to provide any of the counter stuff.  In that case, about the
best we can do is time-based, gprof-style, profiling, which is what
psrun should produce in your case when using the profil.xml configuration
file.  The executable has to run long enough for an interrupt/sample
to occur, though... a few seconds of CPU time should be plenty.
The output XML document should contain addresses and sample counts,
which can be post-processed with psprocess.

> Anyway with tDOM installed correctly I enthusiasticly went to run 
> psconfig to create our own configuration, when it spit out an error message:
> 
> > ERROR: Unable to find PAPI
> 
> Which I thought was completely optional. But I installed PAPI on my machine 
> anyway (without patching the kernel, because I don't have the priveledges to 
> do so) and re-configured and installed PerfSuite with the --with-papi=PAPI_DIR 
> option, but it still did not work.

psconfig is the "least important" of the pieces, and so is not regularly
updated.  I think it's still a nice and useful little tool, and probably
down the road will be updated so that it'll do something if hardware
counter support is not present but unfortunately what you report is
what you can expect from 0.6.1 (and 0.6.2).  Bad documentation on
this side, I'm afraid :(

> 
> Anyway for the time being this project is being due to being a busy grad-
> student, but I'll probably pick it back up sometime this summer when I have 
> more free-time. In regards for making distrobution specific packages (RPMs, 
> DEB, etc) I'd love to see that happen. I know on SourceForge you can place 
> help wanted ads (look in the Admin section and it should be there somewher) 
> and see if there are any OSS developers who can help you package it. (I'm 
> assuming you don't have the time to do it yourself). I'd like to help, but I'm 
> far too busy right now and I've never created packages for any of the programs 
> I've written, although I'll need to learn how to soon for another OSS project 
> I've been working on for over 9 months. :)
> 
> Thanks once again for all your help.

Sounds good - any and all help is welcome and appreciated, and your
feedback qualifies as help already (hopefully your pain is someone else's 
gain!). I think you probably will see at a minimum an RPM-based release
in addition to the usual .tar.gz format later on, probably for 0.6.2
final.  Most likely, there will be a tDOM RPM and a PerfSuite one,
and ideally you would install them in that order.  I'd guess that
there will be with- and without-PAPI versions, since PAPI is optional
and has that kernel path dependency currently on x86 systems.

Thanks again - Rick