trace command

Synopsis

trace stats
trace pause
trace resume
trace funclist [<addr> <size>]
trace calls [<addr> <size>]

Description

The trace command is used to control the U-Boot tracing system. It allows tracing to be paused and resumed, shows statistics for traces and provides a way to dump out the trace information.

trace stats

This display tracing statistics, as follows:

function sites

Functions are binned as a way of reducing the amount of space needed to hold all the function information. This is controlled by FUNC_SITE_SIZE in the trace.h header file. The usual value is 4, which provides the finest granularity (assuming a minimum instruction size of 4 bytes) which means that every function can be resolved individually.

function calls

Total number of function calls, including those which were not traced due to buffer space. This count does not include functions which exceeded the depth limit.

untracked function calls

Total number of function calls which did not appear in the U-Boot image. This can happen if a function is called outside the normal code area.

traced function calls

Total number of function calls which were actually traced, i.e. are included in the recorded trace data.

dropped due to overflow

If the trace buffer was exhausted then this shows the number of records that were dropped. Try reducing the depth limit or expanding the buffer size.

maximum observed call depth

Maximum observed call depth while tracing.

calls not traced due to depth

Counts the number of function calls that were not recorded because they exceeded the maximum call depth.

max function calls

Maximum number of function calls which can be recorded in the trace buffer, given its size. Once function calls hits this value, recording stops.

trace buffer

Address of trace buffer

call records

Address of first trace record. This is near the start of the trace buffer, after the function-call counts.

trace pause

Pauses tracing, so that no more data is added to the trace buffer.

trace resume

Resumes tracing, so that new function calls are added to the trace buffer if there is sufficient space.

trace funclist [<addr> <size>]

Dumps a list of functions into the provided buffer. The file uses a format specific to U-Boot: a header, following by the function offset and call count.

If the address and size are not given, these are obtained from Environment Variables. In any case the environment variables are updated after the command runs.

The resulting data should be written out to the host, e.g. using Ethernet or a filesystem. There are no tools provided to read this sdata.

trace calls [<addr> <size>]

Dumps a list of function calls into the provided buffer. The file uses a format specific to U-Boot: a header, following by the list of calls. The proftool tool can be used to convert this information ready for further analysis.

Example

=> trace stats
        269,252 function sites
     38,025,059 function calls
              3 untracked function calls
      7,382,690 traced function calls
             17 maximum observed call depth
             15 call depth limit
     68,667,432 calls not traced due to depth
     22,190,112 max function calls

trace buffer 6c000000 call records 6c20de78
=> trace resume
=> trace pause

This shows that resuming the trace causes the buffer to overflow:

=> trace stats
        269,252 function sites
     49,573,694 function calls
              3 untracked function calls
     22,190,112 traced function calls (8289848 dropped due to overflow)
             17 maximum observed call depth
             15 call depth limit
     68,667,432 calls not traced due to depth
     22,190,112 max function calls

trace buffer 6c000000 call records 6c20de78
=> trace funcs 30000000 0x100000
Function trace dumped to 30000000, size 0x1e70

This shows collecting and writing out the result trace data:

::

=> trace calls 20000000 0x10000000 Call list dumped to 20000000, size 0xfdf21a0 => save mmc 1:1 20000000 /trace ${profoffset} File System is consistent file found, deleting update journal finished File System is consistent update journal finished 266281376 bytes written in 18584 ms (13.7 MiB/s)

From here you can use proftool to convert it:

tools/proftool -m System.map -t trace -o asc.fg dump-ftrace