VTune Amplifier XE self validation script on Linux

[Dmitry_P_Intel1]

Hello All,

Time to time we have the following questions from VTune Amplifier Linux customers:

-I don’t have administrator privileges and cannot install VTune Amplifier driver, what limitations might I have with the product without the driver installation?

-I installed the driver but VTune still reports some errors before HW-based collections.

-I’m a system administrator and I'm deploying VTune Amplifier on a cluster or corporative environment, how to check that VTune works OK?

In VTune Amplifier 2018 Gold release we added <VTune_install_dir>/bin64/amplxe-self-checker.sh script that will help to answer such questions.

The self-checker script will run multiple representative analysis types (both software sampling and HW-event based) on a small benchmark application with reliable hotspots and show diagnostics of the runs for collection, finalization and reporting phases for each analysis type. It will also allow to diagnose situations when VTune Amplifier driver is loaded with wrong permissions or an old driver is present indicating that it could be forgotten to be updated.

If Self-checker script found issues that you cannot interpret and address yourself – the log file that Self-checker script emits can be provided to support team and will help developers to get more details what went wrong on the machine.

Also the script will return 0 if all collections passed and non-zero value if a blocked error for any collection type is observed so the check can be scripted.

Let me attach the script output that I had on my 2 socket Broadwell machine with Ubuntu 16.04:

Intel(R) VTune(TM) Amplifier Self Check Utility
Copyright (C) 2009-2017 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
Build Number: 525261

Instrumentation based analysis check
Example of analysis types: Hotspots, Concurrency, Locks and Waits
    Collection: Ok
    Finalization: Ok
    Report: Ok

HW event-based analysis check (Perf)
Example of analysis types: Advanced Hotspots, HPC Performance Characterization, etc.
    Collection: Ok
amplxe: Warning: Consider reducing possible collection overhead by setting the /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid value to 0 (or less).
    Finalization: Ok
    Report: Ok

HW event-based analysis check
Example of analysis types: General Exploration
    Collection: Fail
amplxe: Error: This analysis type requires either an access to system-wide monitoring in the Linux perf subsystem or installation of the VTune Amplifier drivers (see the "Sampling Drivers" help topic for further details). Please set the /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid value to 0 or less to continue without installing the drivers.

HW event-based analysis with uncore events
Example of analysis types: Memory Access
    Collection: Fail
amplxe: Error: This analysis type requires either an access to system-wide monitoring in the Linux perf subsystem or installation of the VTune Amplifier drivers (see the "Sampling Drivers" help topic for further details). Please set the /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid value to 0 or less to continue without installing the drivers.

HW event-based analysis with stacks (Perf)
Example of analysis types: Advanced Hotspots with Stacks, etc.
    Collection: Ok
amplxe: Warning: Context switch data cannot be collected since VTune Amplifier sampling driver is not installed.
amplxe: Warning: Consider reducing possible collection overhead by setting the /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid value to 0 (or less).
    Finalization: Ok
    Report: Ok

amplxe: Warning: VTune Amplifier driver with insufficient permission is detected on the system.
amplxe: Warning: Consider setting proper driver permissions (see the "Sampling Drivers" help topic).
amplxe: Warning: Otherwise, the driverless collection with limited analysis support will be enabled by default.
The check observed a product failure on your system.
Review errors in the output above to fix a problem or contact Intel technical support.
Log location: /tmp/amplxe-tmp-vtune/self-checker-2017.09.19_23.08.49/log.txt

Looking at the output we can see that software sampling and tracing collection is OK, Intel driver is loaded with insufficient permissions so VTune Amplifier automatically started using perf kernel profiling capabilities. With the current perf configuration neither General Exploration nor Memory Access analysis will work since they require system wide collection abilities.

Frankly speaking initially the script was written for internal purposes but we though it can also be shared with our customers to help. Feel free to use it and share your thoughts what can make it better if you see it useful.

Thanks & Regards, Dmitry