Running toplev offline

When you cannot run toplev on the target system, it is possible to do the measurement separately just using perf:

On target system (only needed once):

cat /proc/cpuinfo > toplev_cpuinfo
find /sys/devices > toplev_topology

Copy cpuinfo and topology to system running toplev.

On toplev system:

toplev --force-topology topology --force-cpuinfo cpuinfo --gen-script <toplev options> > script

should be the intended configuration, e.g. which level or additional metrics. It is probably a good idea to use -I 1000 or similar to get a time series measurement.

Copy script to target system and run on target:

chmod +x script
./script sleep 1

This will measure the target system for 1s. Alternatively you can specify a command to measure (not it will still measure globally), or nothing (measure until Ctrl-C). Likely this will require root, unless --single-thread was used.

The output will be toplev_perf.csv (and also toplev_topology / toplev_cpuinfo, but these are not needed again from the earlier step). The name of the output can be overriden using OUT.

OUT=mylog ./script myprogram

Then the output will be mylog_perf.csv

Copy the output file back to the toplev system and run

toplev.py <original toplev options> --import toplev_perf.csv --force-cpuinfo toplev_cpuinfo --force-topology toplev_topology

The toplev options need to match the options used with the original --gen-script. There are some exceptions. For example it's possible to change the Output options, such as --global / --per-* / --columns / --summary and run it with the same --import input file. This is useful to summarize a single measurement in multiple ways (e.g. per core, per socket, graph, global summary). In such a case it's not necessarily needed to run a script, the data file can also be generated with --perf-output from toplev.

toplev -I 1000 --perf-output foo.csv <options>
toplev --import foo.csv <options> --summary --global        # generate global summary
toplev --import foo.csv <options> --summary --per-socket    # generate per socket summary
toplev --import foo.csv <options> --summary --per-core      # generate per core summary