perf-test(1) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| COLOPHON

PERF-TEST(1)                   perf Manual                   PERF-TEST(1)

NAME top

       perf-test - Runs sanity tests.

SYNOPSIS top

       perf test [<options>] [{list <test-name-fragment>|[<test-name-fragments>|<test-numbers>]}]

DESCRIPTION top

       This command does assorted sanity tests, initially through linked
       routines but also will look for a directory with more tests in the
       form of scripts.

       To get a list of available tests use perf test list, specifying a
       test name fragment will show all tests that have it.

       To run just specific tests, inform test name fragments or the
       numbers obtained from perf test list.

OPTIONS top

       -s, --skip
           Tests to skip (comma separated numeric list).

       -v, -vv, -vvv, --verbose
           With a single -v, verbose level 1, only failing test output is
           displayed. With -vv and higher all test output is shown.

       -S, --sequential
           Run all tests one after the other. By default "exclusive"
           tests are run sequentially, but other tests are run in
           parallel to speed execution.

       -r, --runs-per-test
           Run each test the given number of times, by default once. This
           option can be useful to determine if a test is flaky.

       -F, --dont-fork
           Do not fork child for each test, run all tests within single
           process, this sets sequential mode.

       --dso
           Specify a DSO for the "Symbols" test.

       -w, --workload=
           Run a built-in workload, to list them use --list-workloads,
           current ones include: noploop, thloop, leafloop, sqrtloop,
           brstack, datasym, context_switch_loop, deterministic,
           named_threads and landlock.

               Used with the shell script regression tests.

               Some accept an extra parameter:

               seconds: leafloop, noploop, sqrtloop, thloop
               nrloops: brstack, context_switch_loop

               'named_threads' accepts the number of threads and the number of loops to
               do in each thread.

               The datasym, landlock and deterministic workloads don't accept any.

       --list-workloads
           List the available workloads to use with -w/--workload.

       --record-ctl=fifo:ctl-fifo[,ack-fifo]
           This option is used to communicate with a perf record session
           in order to control the recording scope to only the workload
           and avoid recording setup and teardown code. When specifying
           this option, the same FIFO path must be specified in the
           record session via:

               perf record -D -1 --control=fifo:ctl-fifo[,ack-fifo] ...

               Perf test sends 'enable' and 'disable' commands through ctl-fifo to
               control event recording. If 'ack-fifo' is provided, the workload runner
               waits for an 'ack' response after each command.

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the perf (Performance analysis tools for
       Linux (in Linux source tree)) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at 
       ⟨https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git⟩
       on 2026-08-04.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2026-08-03.)  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

perf                            2026-06-10                   PERF-TEST(1)

Pages that refer to this page: perf(1)