profile(7D)							      Devices							       profile(7D)

NAME

       profile - DTrace profile interrupt provider

DESCRIPTION

       The profile driver is a DTrace dynamic tracing provider that adds time-based interrupt event sources that can be used as DTrace probes.

       Each  profile  event  source is a time-based interrupt firing every fixed, specified time interval. You can use these probes to sample some
       aspect of system state every unit time and the samples can then be used to infer system behavior. If the sampling rate is high, or the sam-
       pling  time  is	long, an accurate inference is possible. By using the DTrace facility to bind arbitrary actions to probes, you can use the
       profile provider to sample practically anything in the system. For example, you could sample the state  of  the	current  thread,  the  CPU
       state, or the current machine instruction each time a probe fires.

       The  profile  driver  is  not  a  public interface and you access the instrumentation offered by this provider through DTrace. Refer to the
       Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide for a description of the public documented interfaces available  for  the	DTrace	facility  and  the  probes
       offered by the profile provider.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for a description of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWdtrp			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Private			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       dtrace(1M), attributes(5), dtrace(7D)

       Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide

SunOS 5.10							    4 Sep 2003							       profile(7D)