How to Profile a Slow Server with Perf on Linux

Linux Server Admin with Fexingo: Sysadmin, Bash, and Server Engineering · Jul 25, 2026 · 4m

Lucas and Luna dive into perf, the Linux profiling tool, with a real production scenario: a web server experiencing high CPU latency. They walk through capturing performance data using perf record, analyzing hot functions with perf report, and visualizing call stacks with flamegraphs. You'll learn how to pinpoint the exact function consuming CPU cycles—whether it's a Lua script in Nginx or a kernel driver. The episode covers sampling frequency, call-graph modes, hardware counters like instructions per cycle, and syscall tracing with perf trace. By the end, you'll have a repeatable workflow…