HP Caliper User Guide Release 5.5 (5900-2351, August 2012)

When --scope system is used, for most measurements, HP Caliper measures all user and kernel
activity: either all user and kernel activity or individual processes or the modules of those processes.
When --scope system is used, HP Caliper continues collecting data until you stop it with Ctrl-C.
You can also specify the number of seconds to collect data with the -e option.
For example, to create a Flat Profile (fprof) report for all activity on the system for 20 seconds:
$ caliper fprof -o fprof.txt --event-defaults PLM-kernel --scope system -e 20
HP Caliper also provides two options (used only with the --scope system option) that help you
limit the information it collects. For more information, see “--exclude-caliper ” (p. 61) and
“--exclude-idle ” (p. 61).
Limitations in Using --scope system
• You cannot use the --scope system option if another HP Caliper process is running on
the system. Using the --scope system option also prevents another HP Caliper process
from starting until the kernel measurement finishes.
• On HP-UX, you can only use the --scope system option when logged in as the root user.
(On Linux, you do not need to be root user.)
• In --scope system measurements on HP-UX, HP Caliper cannot locate an executable or
a shared library if it is invoked using a relative path. In addition, at certain times, executables
and shared libraries cannot be located even if they are specified with complete paths. This
problem is due to limitations in APIs provided to collect information about executables and
shared libraries associated with a process on HP-UX.
If this problem occurs, the result can be a large number of samples reported as “unattributed”
in --scope system reports. The workaround is to use the --module-search-path option
to specify a list of directories where the executables and shared libraries for the processes
can be located.
• On Linux, you cannot use the --exclude-caliper and --exclude-idle options to
exclude time spent in HP Caliper processing and in the idle loop. (These options are both set
to False and cannot be changed.) Thus, you cannot directly compare --scope system
measurements between HP-UX and Linux.
--search
Used only with the caliper info command. See “How to Display Reference Information About
CPU Counters or HP Caliper Report Types” (p. 101).
--skip-functions
--skip-functions func1[, func2, ...]
Specifies one or more functions that are of no interest. If a call stack sample contains any of the
specified functions as a leaf entry, HP Caliper will skip the function while reporting the call stack
profile.
The maximum number of functions that can be specified is 100.
For more information, see Chapter 11 (page 133).
--sort-by
--sort-by metric
--sort-by metric,cpu_event
Specifies that performance data is to be sorted by values of the specified metric.
For more information, see “Available Metrics for Report Sorting and Cutoffs” (page 107).
--search 71