gmon Tunables (The GNU C Library)

### 39.8 gmon Tunables ¶

Tunable namespace: glibc.gmon ¶

  This tunable namespace affects the behaviour of the gmon profiler. gmon is a component of the GNU C Library which is normally used in conjunction with gprof.

  When GCC compiles a program with the `-pg` option, it instruments the program with calls to the `mcount` function, to record the program’s call graph. At program startup, a memory buffer is allocated to store this call graph; the size of the buffer is calculated using a heuristic based on code size. If during execution, the buffer is found to be too small, profiling will be aborted and no `gmon.out` file will be produced. In that case, you will see the following message printed to standard error:

      mcount: call graph buffer size limit exceeded, gmon.out will not be generated

  Most of the symbols discussed in this section are defined in the header `sys/gmon.h`. However, some symbols (for example `mcount`) are not defined in any header file, since they are only intended to be called from code generated by the compiler.

Tunable: glibc.mem.minarcs ¶

  The heuristic for sizing the call graph buffer is known to be insufficient for small programs; hence, the calculated value is clamped to be at least a minimum size. The default minimum (in units of call graph entries, `struct tostruct`), is given by the macro `MINARCS`. If you have some program with an unusually complex call graph, for which the heuristic fails to allocate enough space, you can use this tunable to increase the minimum to a larger value.

Tunable: glibc.mem.maxarcs ¶

  To prevent excessive memory consumption when profiling very large programs, the call graph buffer is allowed to have a maximum of `MAXARCS` entries. For some very large programs, the default value of `MAXARCS` defined in `sys/gmon.h` is too small; in that case, you can use this tunable to increase it.

  Note the value of the `maxarcs` tunable must be greater or equal to that of the `minarcs` tunable; if this constraint is violated, a warning will printed to standard error at program startup, and the `minarcs` value will be used as the maximum as well.

  Setting either tunable too high may result in a call graph buffer whose size exceeds the available memory; in that case, an out of memory error will be printed at program startup, the profiler will be disabled, and no `gmon.out` file will be generated.