Pmcount for Linux on Power Architecture

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Platform requirements

Hardware:

• IBM POWER 4, POWER 4+, POWER 5, POWER 5+ or PowerPC 970-based system running Linux 2.6.5 or above. (The supported distributions are Red Hat and Suse.)
• Kernel version 2.6.14 or above (for using the Kprobe modules)
• Root access (in order to run the tool).

Installation instructions

The download package includes the following:

• under the IBM "early release of programs" license: a .tar file containing the user tool, the event and group files for each architecture, the tool's readme files, a data collection script, and the instruction manual
• under the GPL license: a separate .tar file containing the optional Kprobe modules and their make files.

1. Download the tar files and transfer them to the target machine.
2. Create a directory for the tool. Move the files to this tool directory and untar the files.
3. Ensure that the pmcount tool, the make_perprocesscntrs, and the make_virt64bitcntrs files have root execute privilege. The rest of the files must have read permission.
4. If the Kprobe modules will be used, it is recommended that the user build the Kprobe modules by hand in order to verify that the build is without error. Note that the tool will build any necessary modules that have not already been built for the currently-running version of the operating system.
   1. If the tool is used on a Red Hat distribution, uncomment the #include /usr/include/asm-ppc64/uaccess.h line in the perprocesscntrs.c file. When running on a SLES distribution, comment it out.
   2. Build the per process counter module with the command ./make_perprocesscntrs and ensure that the module is built without error.
   3. Build the virtual 64-bit counter module with the command ./make_virt64bitcntrs and ensure that there were no errors.

The tool is now ready to use. A link can be added to the pmcount tool in the /usr/local/bin directory if desired. However, when not running in the installation directory, the --dir option will need to be used to specify the installation directory in which the tool can find the Kprobe modules, the event files, and the group files.

Please see the user manual or the help guide (./pmcount -h) for additional information on using the tool.