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Using golang's pprof tool to gather performance profiles for debugging

Peter Stubbs
  • Updated

Golang offers a tool to profile a running golang binary called pprof. It can be enabled for most Tyk products and is useful to diagnose performance issues

Enabling the profiler

Tyk Gateway

Set TYK_GW_HTTPPROFILE=true

Tyk Dashboard

Add the --pprof command line parameter. Unfortunately there isn't currently an environment variable option for this

Tyk Pump

Set TYK_PMP_HTTPPROFILE=true

Tyk MDCB

Set TYK_MDCB_HTTPPROFILE=true

Tyk Enterprise Developer Portal

Set PORTAL_ENABLE_HTTP_PROFILER=true

Tyk Identity Broken (TIB)

Not currently available

Gathering a profile

Once the profiler is enabled it listens of the same port as the main application is using with the exception of the Tyk gateway. In its case it listens on the port configured for TYK_GW_CONTROLAPIPORT although if this is unconfigured it is the same port as the gateway serves APIs on.

In most cases it is best to download a profile for later analysis. To do this use the wget command or similar

Here are sample commands, please adjust the protocol to http if the target is not using https. 10 seconds is usually enough, but the capture must be done while the event to be diagnosed is happening.
 

  • CPU profile

    wget -O CPU-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=10

  • Allocs

    wget -O alloc-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/allocs?seconds=10

  • Block

    wget -O block-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/block?seconds=10

  • Heap

    wget -O heap-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/heap?seconds=10

  • goroutine

    wget -O goroutine-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/goroutine?seconds=10

  • mutex

    wget -O mutex-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/mutex?seconds=10

  • threadcreate

    wget -O threadcreate-profile.dmp --no-check-certificate https://<server>:<port>/debug/pprof/threadcreate?seconds=10
 
 
 
Once the .dmp files are gathered they can be uploaded into a zendesk ticket or decoded several ways
  • There is a web based decoder. Note that the hosting of this is unofficial so take care what is uploaded into it.
  • There is a docker docker image that can be run to decode the .dmp files
  • If golang's pprof is installed locally it can be run locally like this
$ pprof -http localhost:8001 CPU_profile_2.7.23_11.40am.dmp
 

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