Provides access to the V8 CPU Profiler and Heap Profiler, to inspect the Kibana running this plugin.
The endpoints are:
/_dev/cpu_profile?duration=(seconds)&interval=(microseconds)
/_dev/heap_profile?duration=(seconds)&interval=(bytes)
The default duration is 5 seconds.
For more information on these V8 APIs, see:
- https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/v8/Profiler/
- https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/v8/HeapProfiler/
Note that due to bugs or limitations, it's not possible to generate heap snapshots using the techniques used to generate the cpu and heap profiles.
Try them right now, assuming you started Kibana with --run-examples!
When using curl, you can use the -kOJ options, which:
-k --insecure: allow HTTPS usage with self-signed certs-O --remote-name: use the server-specified name for this download-J --remote-header-name: use theContent-Dispositionas the name of the download
So one of the following should work for you, to run a 10 second CPU profile using an interval of 100μs (default: 5s / 1000μs):
curl -OJ "http://elastic:changeme@localhost:5601/_dev/cpu_profile?duration=10&interval=100"
curl -kOJ "https://elastic:changeme@localhost:5601/_dev/cpu_profile?duration=10&interval=100"
The files generated will be:
MM-DD_hh-mm-ss.cpuprofile
MM-DD_hh-mm-ss.heapprofile
These filetypes are the ones expected by various V8 tools that can read these.
You can use these URLs in your browser, and the files will be saved with the generated names.
The traditional tools used to view these are part of Chrome Dev Tools (CDT) and now VS Code also supports viewing these files. They provide similar capabilities.
There doesn't seem to be a much doc available on how to use the viewers for these files. The Chrome Dev Tools docs are extremely old and appear to be out-of-date with the current user interface. The VS Code documentation Analyzing a profile is more recent, but there's not much there.
For CPU profiles, open CDT and then click on the "Performance" tab. You should be able to drop a file right from Finder / Explorer onto the CDT window, and then get the visualization of the profile. If you downloaded the profile right from the browser, using the URL in the URL bar, you can drop the download file from the download status button right into CDT.
For heap profiles, open CDT and then click on the "Memory" tab. Drag and drop doesn't seem to work here, but you can load a file via a file prompter by clicking the "Load" button at the bottom of the "Memory" pane. You will probably need to scroll to see the button.
VSCode now supports .cpuprofile files and .heapprofile files
directly, displaying them as a table of function timings. There is also
an extension available to display flame charts installed by clicking
on the grey-ed out "flame" button on the top-right of the cpu profile
view.
There seem to be problems with both CDT and the VS Code tools, at times. The flame charts in VS Code seem to go haywire sometimes. The heap profile tables in CDT don't expand. Etc. So, beware, and be prepared to have to use multiple tools to analyze these files.
An alternate view of CPU profiles, which organizes files based on
"packages", is available with the NOde PROfiler (no-pro) thing
available at https://pmuellr.github.io/no-pro/ . It also supports
drag-n-drop of CPU profile files. Note that you can get more
directories to show up as "packages", by bringing up CDT and running the
following code:
localStorage['fake-packages-dirs'] = "x-pack/plugins,packages,src/core"
If you're handy with Mac Finder, or other ways of auto-launching apps
based on file extensions, it's easy to associate .cpuprofile files
with vscode.
Since the http endpoints are GET requests, they are easy to bookmark. Start a profile by clicking on a bookmark.
When these files are downloaded via Chrome, you can typically launch them directly from the download bar, or drag the file to a viewer.