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Flame graphs

What's a flame graph useful for?

Flame graphs are a way of visualizing CPU time spent in functions. They can help you pin down where you spend too much time doing synchronous operations.

How to flame graph

You might have heard creating a flame graph for Node.js is difficult, but that's not true (anymore). Solaris vms are no longer needed for flame graphs on linux!

  1. install lldb in your system (eg. with apt-get)
  2. install llnode according to readme llnode notes
  3. install linux-tools-common (eg. with apt-get)
  4. try running perf - it might complain about missing kernel modules, install them too
  5. install stackvis npm i -g stackvis
  6. run node with perf enabled perf record -e cycles:u -g -- node --perf-basic-prof app.js
  7. disregard warnings unless they're saying you can't run perf due to missing packages; you may get some warnings about not being able to access kernel module samples which you're not after anyway.
  8. run perf script, but pipe it through some cleanup: perf script | egrep -v "( __libc_start| LazyCompile | v8::internal::| Builtin:| Stub:| LoadIC:|\[unknown\]| LoadPolymorphicIC:)" | sed 's/ LazyCompile:[*~]\?/ /' > perfs.out explanation
  9. run stackvis perf < perfs.out > flamegraph.htm

Now open the flame graph file in your favorite browser and watch it burn. It's color-coded so you can focus on the most saturated orange bars first. They're likely to represent CPU heavy functions.

Worth mentioning - if you click an element of a flame graph a zoom-in of its surroundings will get displayed above the graph.

Use perf to sample a running process

perf record -F99 -p `pgrep -n node` -g -- sleep 3

Wait, what is that sleep 3 for? It's there to keep the perf running - despite -p option pointing to a different pid, the command needs to be executed on a process and end with it. Just a convenient way to keep perf going for a given time.

Why is -F (profiling frequency) set to 99? I honestly don't know, Netflix guys used that value. Results look good. You can adjust if you want.

After you get that 3 second perf record, proceed with generating the flame graph with last two steps from above.

About perf script filtering

The long line of greps and seds after perf script call is there to remove some V8 and node internals so that it's easier for you to focus on your JavaScript calls. These are only important if you are looking for an issue with Node internals.

If you read your flame graph and it seems odd, as if something is missing in the key function taking up most time, try generating your flame graph without the filters - maybe you got a rare case of an issue with Node itself.

Node's profiling options

--perf-basic-prof-only-functions and --perf-basic-prof seem like the only two you might be initially interested in for debugging your JavaScript code. Other options should only be useful for profiling Node itself, which is outside the scope of this howto.

--perf-basic-prof-only-functions produces less output, so it's the option with least overhead.

Why do I need them at all?

Well, without these options you'll still get a flame graph, but with most bars labeled v8::Function::Call.

Examples

See a real flame graph - download the file from /samples/flame-graph-example.html

Or even better, practice capturing it yourself with a flame graph exercise