Comment 3 for bug 1839852

After some investigation, I found this:

If I use the perf executable from the package linux-tools-4.15.0-55-generic
along with the Linux kernel 5.0.0-23-generic from the package
linux-image-5.0.0-23-generic , it works.

$ /usr/lib/linux-tools/4.15.0-55-generic/perf top -p `pidof top`

Samples: 134 of event 'cycles:ppp', Event count (approx.): 26218815
Overhead Shared Object Symbol
   6.69% libc-2.27.so [.] _IO_vfscanf
   4.01% [kernel] [k] entry_SYSCALL_64
   3.71% [kernel] [k] do_syscall_64
   3.36% [kernel] [k] num_to_str
   3.25% libc-2.27.so [.] __GI_____strtoll_l_internal
   2.54% [kernel] [k] syscall_return_via_sysret
   2.35% [kernel] [k] __d_lookup
   2.24% [kernel] [k] get_mem_cgroup_from_mm
   2.22% libc-2.27.so [.] _IO_default_xsputn
   1.84% libc-2.27.so [.] _IO_sputbackc
   1.80% [kernel] [k] kmem_cache_free
   1.77% [kernel] [k] bitmap_string.isra.2
   1.72% [kernel] [k] render_sigset_t
   1.65% [kernel] [k] __alloc_file
   1.62% [kernel] [k] do_task_stat
   1.57% [kernel] [k] number

So, the problem is really the executable /usr/lib/linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23/perf
which is in the package:

$ apt-file search /usr/lib/linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23/perf
linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23: /usr/lib/linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23/perf

$ dpkg -l|grep linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23|awk '{print $1, $2, $3, $4}'|column -t
ii linux-hwe-tools-5.0.0-23 5.0.0-23.24~18.04.1 amd64

According to https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic-updates/linux-hwe-cloud-tools-5.0.0-23 ,
the source package for linux-hwe-tools is linux-hwe.