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Copy file name to clipboardExpand all lines: src/tools/miri/doc/tracing.md
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Miri can be traced to understand how much time is spent in its various components (e.g. borrow tracker, data race checker, etc.). When tracing is enabled, running Miri will create a `.json` trace file that can be opened and analyzed in [Perfetto](https://ui.perfetto.dev/). For any questions regarding this documentation you may contact [Stypox](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/dm/627563-Stypox) on Zulip.
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> [!WARNING]
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> Tracing in Miri at the moment is broken due to two bugs in tracing libraries: https://github.com/tokio-rs/tracing/pull/3392 and https://github.com/davidbarsky/tracing-tree/issues/93. Also see https://github.com/rust-lang/miri/issues/4752.
Miri saves traces using the the `tracing_chrome``tracing::Layer` so that they can be visualized in Perfetto. To instruct `tracing_chrome` to put some spans on a separate trace thread/line than other spans when viewed in Perfetto, you can pass `tracing_separate_thread = tracing::field::Empty` to the tracing macros. This is useful to separate out spans which just indicate the current step or program frame being processed by the interpreter. As explained in [The timeline](#the-timeline), those spans end up under the "Global Legacy Events" track. You should use a value of `tracing::field::Empty` so that other tracing layers (e.g. the logger) will ignore the `tracing_separate_thread` field. For example:
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Miri saves traces using the `tracing_chrome``tracing::Layer` so that they can be visualized in Perfetto. To instruct `tracing_chrome` to put some spans on a separate trace thread/line than other spans when viewed in Perfetto, you can pass `tracing_separate_thread = tracing::field::Empty` to the tracing macros. This is useful to separate out spans which just indicate the current step or program frame being processed by the interpreter. As explained in [The timeline](#the-timeline), those spans end up under the "Global Legacy Events" track. You should use a value of `tracing::field::Empty` so that other tracing layers (e.g. the logger) will ignore the `tracing_separate_thread` field. For example:
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```rust
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let _trace = enter_trace_span!(M, step::eval_statement, tracing_separate_thread = tracing::field::Empty);
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```
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### Time measurements
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tracing-chrome originally used `std::time::Instant` to measure time, however on some x86/x86_64 Linux systems it might be unbearably slow since the underlying system call (`clock_gettime`) would take ≈1.3µs. Read more [here](https://btorpey.github.io/blog/2014/02/18/clock-sources-in-linux/) about how the Linux kernel chooses the clock source.
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tracing-chrome uses `std::time::Instant` to measure time. On most modern systems this is ok, since the underlying system call (`clock_gettime`) uses very fast hardware counters (e.g. `tsc`) and has a latency of ≈16ns.
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On some x86/x86_64 Linux systems, however, `tsc` is not "reliable" and the system thus relies on other timers, e.g. `hpet` which takes ≈1.3µs. Read [here](https://btorpey.github.io/blog/2014/02/18/clock-sources-in-linux/) how the Linux kernel chooses the clock source, and how to check if your system is using `tsc`. If it doesn't use `tsc`, then expect most of the trace time being spent intime measurements, which degrades traces' usefulness... See [here](https://github.com/rust-lang/miri/issues/4563) for some discussion.
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Therefore, on x86/x86_64 Linux systems with a CPU that has an invariant TSC counter, we read from that instead to measure time, which takes only ≈13ns. There are unfortunately a lot of caveats to this approach though, as explained [in the code](https://github.com/rust-lang/miri/blob/master/src/bin/log/tracing_chrome_instant.rs) and [in the PR](https://github.com/rust-lang/miri/pull/4524). The most impactful one is that: every thread spawned in Miri that wants to trace something (which requires measuring time) needs to pin itself to a single CPU core (using `sched_setaffinity`).
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> [!WARNING]
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> A (somewhat risky) workaround is to add `tsc=reliable clocksource=tsc hpet=disable` to the kernel boot parameters, which forces it to use `tsc` even if it is unreliable. But this may render the system unstable, so try it at your own risk!
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