Same problem on the 20100318 nightly image.

kernel-2.6.33-1.fc13.i686
perf-2.6.33-1.fc13.noarch

Am I doing something wrong? "perf timechart" is mentioned in the alpha release notes so it must work, right?

I investigated with gdb. Perhaps the perf events that timechart uses are not available? I don't see power or sched in 'perf list'.

# gdb /usr/libexec/perf.2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686
(gdb) set args timechart record ls
(gdb) directory /usr/src/debug/kernel-2.6.32/linux-2.6.32.i686/tools/perf/
(gdb) break exit
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/libexec/perf.2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 timechart record ls
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]

 usage: perf record [<options>] [<command>]
    or: perf record [<options>] -- <command> [<options>]

    -e, --event <event>   event selector. use 'perf list' to list available events
    -p, --pid <n>         record events on existing pid
    -r, --realtime <n>    collect data with this RT SCHED_FIFO priority
    -R, --raw-samples     collect raw sample records from all opened counters
    -a, --all-cpus        system-wide collection from all CPUs
    -A, --append          append to the output file to do incremental profiling
    -C, --profile_cpu <n>
                          CPU to profile on
    -f, --force           overwrite existing data file
    -c, --count           event period to sample
    -o, --output <file>   output file name
    -i, --inherit         child tasks inherit counters
    -F, --freq <n>        profile at this frequency
    -m, --mmap-pages <n>  number of mmap data pages
    -g, --call-graph      do call-graph (stack chain/backtrace) recording
    -v, --verbose         be more verbose (show counter open errors, etc)
    -s, --stat            per thread counts
    -d, --data            Sample addresses
    -n, --no-samples      don't sample
    -M, --multiplex       multiplex counter output in a single channel


Breakpoint 1, exit (status=129) at exit.c:99
99      {
(gdb)  bt
#0  exit (status=129) at exit.c:99
#1  0x08063978 in usage_with_options (argc=18, argv=0x8592068, 
    options=0x8119320, usagestr=0x81195f0, flags=2)
    at util/parse-options.c:501
#2  parse_options (argc=18, argv=0x8592068, options=0x8119320, 
    usagestr=0x81195f0, flags=2) at util/parse-options.c:389
#3  0x08054e54 in cmd_record (argc=18, argv=0x8592068, prefix=0x0)
    at builtin-record.c:723
#4  0x0804af33 in run_builtin (p=0x8148b3c, argc=3, argv=0xbffff658)
    at perf.c:262
#5  0x0804bc61 in handle_internal_command (argc=3, argv=0xbffff658)
    at perf.c:321
#6  run_argv (argc=3, argv=0xbffff658) at perf.c:365
#7  main (argc=3, argv=0xbffff658) at perf.c:482
(gdb) frame 2
#2  parse_options (argc=18, argv=0x8592068, options=0x8119320, 
    usagestr=0x81195f0, flags=2) at util/parse-options.c:389
389                     usage_with_options(usagestr, options);
(gdb) list
384                     if (ctx.argv[0][1] == '-') {
385                             error("unknown option `%s'", ctx.argv[0] + 2);
386                     } else {
387                             error("unknown switch `%c'", *ctx.opt);
388                     }
389                     usage_with_options(usagestr, options);
390             }
391
392             return parse_options_end(&ctx);
393     }
(gdb) print ctx.argv[0]
$1 = 0x8592218 "power:power_start"

Tested with the 20100428 kde nightly - ie kernel-2.6.33.2-57.fc13 - in virtualbox. Neither 'perf record sched ls' or 'perf record timechart ls' work, but at least now they report missing perf events before printing the usage message.

This is working for me on 2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64...

kyle@dreadnought ~/src $ sudo perf timechart record ls
9base		 elfutils	      libnl		 rpm
<snip>
DeviceKit-power  iproute2	      perf.data		 xrandr
dracut		 klibc		      pixman		 xserver
dwm		 koji		      PolicyKit
e2fsprogs	 libbsd		      pyclutter
eagle		 libdrm		      razor
[ perf record: Woken up 1 times to write data ]
[ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.383 MB perf.data (~16724 samples) ]
kyle@dreadnought ~/src $ sudo perf timechart -i ./perf.data 
Written 0.1 seconds of trace to output.svg.
kyle@dreadnought ~/src $ 

Am I missing something?

Got it - perf doesn't mount debugfs. Immediately after boot, perf timechart doesn't work. But after running latencytop, it does.

# perf list | wc -l
52
# latencytop
# perf list | wc -l
802

Aaaah cool... I'll see about getting a printf in there to warn you that debugfs isn't mounted.

regards, Kyle

Actually, I think I googled up something about this yesterday. Ah yes,

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=29c52aa2300173dd45df04dae1f5acc81a2c93b1

Doesn't seem to be in 2.6.32 or 2.6.33 trees.