The perf Linux tool can instrument the Linux kernel with both hardware and software performance counter events as well as static and dynamic kernel trace points. For this, it uses the kernel functionality we have seen in previous recipes, providing a common interface to all of them.

This tool can be used to debug, troubleshoot, optimize, and measure applications, workloads, or the full system, and covers the processor, kernel, and applications. Perf is probably the most complete of the tracing and profiling tools available for a Linux system.