amplxe: Error: [Instrumentation Engine]: failed to create the detach process (clone failed)

[John_Z_]

running command

amplxe-cl -target-process dsd -collect hotspots
amplxe: Collection started. To stop the collection, either press CTRL-C or enter from another console window: amplxe-cl -r /r000hs -command stop.

then stopped but got the following error:

^Camplxe: Error: [Instrumentation Engine]: failed to create the detach process (clone failed)
amplxe: Collection detached.
amplxe: Collection failed.
amplxe: Internal Error

Could anyone help? Thanks

[Peter_W_Intel]

Using Ctrl-C is not encouraged, Try to use - "amplxe-cl -command stop -r /r000hs", on other console.

Or you let VTune to terminate it by setting duration - "amplxe-cl -target-process dsd -collect hotspots -duration 20", for example

[John_Z_]

Peter, I still got the same error when using  "amplxe-cl -command stop -r /r000hs" or with "-duration" option

[Peter_W_Intel]

Another way is to check if you ran VTune with same user privilege as target process, what I mean is that you may use same user account to launch target process and VTune. 

You can open cmd as admin, then run vtune in second option: use advanced-hotspots instead of basic hotspots. Advanced-hotspots is system level profiling.

[John_Z_]

advanced-hotspots works. Thanks

[John_Z_]

What about "locksandwaits" analysis type?

It does not support system-wide profiling. If specifying process, it will have same error. Thanks

[Peter_W_Intel]

"locksandwaits" is user level profiling, and don't support system wide profiling.

This is a privilege issue...I guess your target application is system service program. So, you may end target process, then use user account (VTune works) to launch a new process. Thanks!

[Peter_W_Intel]

Hi Matthias,

Thanks for your comments.

>The underlying problem is this: Apparently the intel tool tries to clone the process of the application being analysed...

User mode sampling collections (basic hotspots, concurrency analysis, locks and waits analysis) will instrument running process in user level, the cost is expensive than event based sampling collections, e.g. advanced-hotspots. That was why we recommended to use advanced hotspots instead of  basic hotspots.

>Now to solve this I just added 100GB of swap to my setup and VTune stopped failing with this message...

Increasing memory swap is good way, if your run BIG application (overhead is high either from VTune). You have other ways to reduce overhead, please see this article.