Nsys "kernel module" message, what does it mean?

Developer Tools Nsight Systems Profiling Linux Targets
1

Hope I’m in the right place for this:

We just installed nhpc 24.3 and people are trying to use nsys on a grace node (ubuntu 22). Note the s/w was installed without privileges under our shared cluster filesystem. When we do

module load nvidia/nvhpc/24.3
Then, if I run,
nsys status -e
Output:
 Timestamp counter supported: Yes
CPU Profiling Environment Check
Root privilege: disabled
Linux Kernel Paranoid Level = 1
Linux Distribution = Ubuntu
Linux Kernel Version = 6.2.0-1015-nvidia-64k: OK
Linux perf_event_open syscall available: OK
Sampling trigger event available: OK
Intel(c) Last Branch Record support: Not Available
Kernel module: Not Available
CPU Profiling Environment (process-tree): OK
CPU Profiling Environment (system-wide): Fail
See the product documentation at https://docs.nvidia.com/nsight-systems for more information,
including information on how to set the Linux Kernel Paranoid Level.

what to make of the kernel module message? Is it expected? Not clear what kernel means here: linux module or userland GPU kernel code?

We also installed the .deb nsight package but see the same output.

thanks for any elucidation

2

Move to “Nsight System”

3

In order to get some of the information from linux perf that we use for CPU sampling we need the linux kernel paranoid level to be <=2, however you are, so that should be fine for most features. The line at the bottom is telling you what you need to do to reset the paranoid level.

Here is a quick chart of what CPU profiling capabilities are available at what paranoid level from the User Guide.

Paranoid Level CPU IP/backtrace Sampling process-tree mode CPU IP/backtrace Sampling system-wide mode CPU Context Switch Tracing process-tree mode CPU Context Switch Tracing system-wide mode Event Sampling system-wide mode
3 or greater not available not available not available not available not available
2 User mode IP/backtrace samples only not available available not available not available
1 Kernel and user mode IP/backtrace samples not available available not available not available
0, -1 Kernel and user mode IP/backtrace samples Kernel and user mode IP/backtrace samples available available hardware and OS events
4

Thanks. But what does the message mean?

5

The message means that if your paranoid level is too high for the feature we want, we will not run it.

What options are you trying to run?

6

Thanks. I’m not sure what the tool was being used for in detail, asking on behalf of someone else.