Running Android systrace on device

android debugging trace systrace
saimonjingai picture saimonjingai · Jun 20, 2013 · Viewed 8.3k times · Source

I'm unable to run the Android SDK tool called systrace.pl because I get errors like:

error opening /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/options/overwrite: No such file or directory

And indeed the /sys/kernel/debug/tracing directory doesn't even exist.

A little research showed I need to enable debugfs with the following command:

mount -o rw,remount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug

Running mount there afterwards indicates the debugfs is running:

#mount
...
/sys/kernel/debug /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
...

And I have trace enabled (all items) in the developer settings menu. I'm using the stock ROM 4.1.1 on a Samsung Galaxy S3.

There's a lot of articles out there on systrace for Android but nothing seems to solve the problem of no files actually being generated in /sys/kernel/debug/tracing...

Answer

Luis picture Luis · Nov 30, 2013

Take a look at this document:

Tracing on Android 4.3 and higher

To run a trace on Android 4.3 and higher devices:

Make sure the device is connected through a USB cable and is enabled for debugging.

I think that systrace must be run on a device, not an emulator. I'm getting the same error in my emulator.

Related questions

How can I connect to Android with ADB over TCP?

I am attempting to debug an application on a Motorola Droid, but I am having some difficulty connecting to the device via USB. My development server is a Windows 7 64-bit VM running in Hyper-V, and so I cannot connect directly …

Read More
Run/install/debug Android applications over Wi-Fi?

I thought there was a way to test your applications in development over Wi-Fi. Is this possible? I'd love to be able to untether my phone and develop wirelessly.

Read More
Unfortunately MyApp has stopped. How can I solve this?

I am developing an application, and everytime I run it, I get the message: Unfortunately, MyApp has stopped. What can I do to solve this? About this question - obviously inspired by What is a stack trace, and how can …

Read More