A terminal-based flamegraph viewer that receives profiling data via an OTLP gRPC endpoint and renders a live, interactive flamegraph in the terminal. It can be used to visualize profiling data generated by opentelemetry-ebpf-profiler.

Features

• OTLP gRPC profiles receiver (default 0.0.0.0:4317, configurable via --port)
• Live icicle-style flamegraph with hot/warm color scheme
• Freeze/live toggle to pause updates for smooth navigation
• Frame type annotations ([Native], [Kernel], [JVM], etc.)
• Thread/process grouping via thread.name sample attribute
• Keyboard-driven navigation and zoom
• Thread search (/) with fuzzy filtering
• Experimental: Flamescope tab (https://www.brendangregg.com/flamescope.html)
• Experimental: Executables tab — load debug symbols from ELF/DWARF binaries for inline-aware symbolization (persistent LSM-tree store survives restarts)

Installation

No Rust toolchain required — you can run eprofiler-tui directly with Docker or Podman:

podman run -it -p 4317:4317 ghcr.io/rogercoll/eprofiler-tui:latest --data-dir /tmp

Replace podman with docker if preferred.

Alternatively, install from source with Cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/rogercoll/eprofiler-tui

Usage

The TUI will start and listen for OTLP profile data on port 4317. Point your OpenTelemetry profiling agent at localhost:4317.

To use a different port:

# With Cargo install:
eprofiler-tui --port 4318

Option	Description
-p, --port <PORT>	OTLP gRPC listen port (default: 4317)
-d, --data-dir <PATH>	Symbol store directory (default: ~/.local/share/eprofiler-tui on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/eprofiler-tui on macOS)
-h, --help	Print help

Debug mode

A standalone profile inspector for troubleshooting profiling pipelines. It receives OTLP profiles on a gRPC endpoint and displays each ExportProfilesServiceRequest as a paginated, color-coded view of the raw data — dictionary tables, resource attributes, scope metadata, profile fields, and fully resolved sample stacks.

eprofiler-tui debug
eprofiler-tui debug --port 4318

Navigate between requests like pages in a book with h/l. Each page shows the complete request: string table, mapping table, attribute table, function table, resource attributes, scope info, profile metadata, and every sample with its stack trace rendered as a tree with frame-type colors.

Key	Action
h / ← l / →	Previous / next request
j / ↓ k / ↑	Scroll up / down
d / u	Page down / up
g / G	Jump to first / last request
/	Search within current request
n / N	Next / previous match
q	Quit

Building

Requires Rust 2024 edition and protobuf definitions from the opentelemetry-proto submodule.

The symbolization feature (symblib) pulls in native C/C++ dependencies that need extra build tools:

• cmake and make — used by the zydis disassembler crate
• g++ (or any C++ compiler) — compiles zydis's bundled C sources
• protobuf-compiler (protoc) — used by prost-build to compile .proto definitions inside symblib

git submodule update --init
cargo build --release

Keybindings

Global: Tab switch tab, Ctrl-c / q quit.

Flamegraph tab

Key	Action
f / Space	Toggle freeze/live mode
j / ↓ k / ↑	Navigate depth
h / ← l / →	Navigate siblings
Enter / Esc	Zoom in / out
/	Search threads
r	Reset

Executables tab (experimental — under testing, may be removed for simplification)

Key	Action
j / k	Navigate list
Enter	Load symbols for selected executable
/	Add new executable by path
r	Remove loaded symbols