Wow great debugging article from the performance guru B.Gregg. I'm also not comfortable tracing kernel functions as of yet and remain in user space so far with Sysdig,strace,ltrace.. but a tool such as perf(1) I definitely need a more practical understanding of.
Try to look closely at the methods used to correctly apply perf(1) to the problem at hand. If it feels like you understand _why_ it was used, you'll easily be able to determine if it's the right tool for the job.
