PERF-TIMECHART(1)

🌈 PERF-TIMECHART(1) — like, the perf timechart page, but make it make sense 💅

okay bestie, so this is from the perf Manual (yes, the PERF-TIMECHART(1) girlies) and it's literally the tool that turns your whole system's behavior into a picture. not a metaphor. an actual picture. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

perf-timechart — the tool to visualize total system behavior during a workload. it's giving "watch your computer think." 🧚

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so the original page leaves this part completely empty — no cap, there's nothing here. the actual usage lives down in DESCRIPTION, so scroll a lil. ⭐

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

there are two variants of perf timechart, and you're gonna want to know both:

• 'perf timechart record <command>' — records the system level events of an arbitrary workload. by default timechart records only scheduler and CPU events (task switches, running times, CPU power states, etc), but it's possible to record IO (disk, network) activity using the -I argument. 🔥
• 'perf timechart' — turns a trace into a Scalable Vector Graphics file, that can be viewed with popular SVG viewers such as 'Inkscape'. depending on the events in the perf.data file, timechart will contain scheduler/cpu events or IO events. ✨

in IO mode, every bar has two charts: upper and lower. (two charts, one bar, main character energy tbh.)

• the upper bar shows incoming events (disk reads, ingress network packets). 🍓
• the lower bar shows outgoing events (disk writes, egress network packets).
• there are also poll bars which show how much time application spent in poll/epoll/select syscalls. 👑

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💖 TIMECHART OPTIONS 💖

these are the flags for the plain perf timechart (the SVG-making one, not the recording one):

• -o, --output= — select the output file (default: output.svg) 🎀
• -i, --input= — select the input file (default: perf.data unless stdin is a fifo) 🦋
• -w, --width= — select the width of the SVG file (default: 1000) 📏
• -P, --power-only — only output the CPU power section of the diagram ⚡
• -T, --tasks-only — don't output processor state transitions
• -p, --process — select the processes to display, by name or PID 🔍
• -f, --force — don't complain, do it. (iconic honestly) 💅
• --symfs=<directory[,layout]> — look for files with symbols relative to this directory. the optional layout can be hierarchy (default, matches full path) or flat (only matches base name). this is useful when debug files are stored in a flat directory structure. 🗂️
• -n, --proc-num — print task info for at least given number of tasks.
• -t, --topology — sort CPUs according to topology.
• --highlight=<duration_nsecs|task_name> — highlight tasks (using different color) that run more than given duration or tasks with given name. if a number is given it's interpreted as number of nanoseconds. if a non-numeric string is given it's interpreted as task name. 🌸
• --io-skip-eagain — don't draw EAGAIN IO events.
• --io-min-time=<nsecs> — draw small events as if they lasted min-time. useful when you need to see very small and fast IO. it's possible to specify ms or us suffix to specify time in milliseconds or microseconds. default value is 1ms. ⏱️
• --io-merge-dist=<nsecs> — merge events that are merge-dist nanoseconds apart. reduces number of figures on the SVG and makes it more render-friendly. it's possible to specify ms or us suffix to specify time in milliseconds or microseconds. default value is 1us. 🧚

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💜 RECORD OPTIONS 💜

and these are the flags for perf timechart record:

• -P, --power-only — record only power-related events ⚡
• -T, --tasks-only — record only tasks-related events
• -I, --io-only — record only io-related events 💾
• -g, --callchain — do call-graph (stack chain/backtrace) recording 🪜
• -o, --output= — select the output file (default: perf.data) 🎀

heads up bestie: notice -P and -T and -o show up in both lists — same letters, different meaning depending on whether you're recording or rendering. don't get it twisted. 😭

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🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

okay so first, record a workload (git pull, the classic):

$ perf timechart record git pull

  [ perf record: Woken up 13 times to write data ]
  [ perf record: Captured and wrote 4.253 MB perf.data (~185801 samples) ]

then render it:

$ perf timechart

  Written 10.2 seconds of trace to output.svg.

record a system-wide timechart:

$ perf timechart record

then generate the timechart and highlight 'gcc' tasks:

$ perf timechart --highlight gcc

record system-wide IO events:

$ perf timechart record -I

then generate the timechart:

$ perf timechart

see? ate. 🔥

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• perf-record(1) — go say hi, she's the one doing the actual recording 👑

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k that's the whole page, fr fr. this dropped as part of perf, dated 10/31/2026, living at PERF-TIMECHART(1) — so if you ever need to cite it, that's the receipt. go make some pretty SVGs bestie, you got this 💜✨🎀