1 fio 2 --- 3 4 fio is a tool that will spawn a number of threads or processes doing a 5 particular type of io action as specified by the user. fio takes a 6 number of global parameters, each inherited by the thread unless 7 otherwise parameters given to them overriding that setting is given. 8 The typical use of fio is to write a job file matching the io load 9 one wants to simulate. 10 11 12 Source 13 ------ 14 15 fio resides in a git repo, the canonical place is: 16 17 git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git 18 19 When inside a corporate firewall, git:// URL sometimes does not work. 20 If git:// does not work, use the http protocol instead: 21 22 http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git 23 24 Snapshots are frequently generated and include the git meta data as well. 25 Snapshots can download from: 26 27 http://brick.kernel.dk/snaps/ 28 29 30 Binary packages 31 --------------- 32 33 Debian: 34 Starting with Debian "Squeeze", fio packages are part of the official 35 Debian repository. http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fio 36 37 Ubuntu: 38 Starting with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (aka "Lucid Lynx"), fio packages are part 39 of the Ubuntu "universe" repository. 40 http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=fio 41 42 Red Hat, CentOS & Co: 43 Dag Wiers has RPMs for Red Hat related distros, find them here: 44 http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/fio/ 45 46 Mandriva: 47 Mandriva has integrated fio into their package repository, so installing 48 on that distro should be as easy as typing 'urpmi fio'. 49 50 Solaris: 51 Packages for Solaris are available from OpenCSW. Install their pkgutil 52 tool (http://www.opencsw.org/get-it/pkgutil/) and then install fio via 53 'pkgutil -i fio'. 54 55 Windows: 56 Bruce Cran <bruce (a] cran.org.uk> has fio packages for Windows at 57 http://www.bluestop.org/fio/ . 58 59 60 Mailing list 61 ------------ 62 63 The fio project mailing list is meant for anything related to fio including 64 general discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development. 65 66 An automated mail detailing recent commits is automatically sent to the 67 list at most daily. The list address is fio (a] vger.kernel.org, subscribe 68 by sending an email to majordomo (a] vger.kernel.org with 69 70 subscribe fio 71 72 in the body of the email. Archives can be found here: 73 74 http://www.spinics.net/lists/fio/ 75 76 and archives for the old list can be found here: 77 78 http://maillist.kernel.dk/fio-devel/ 79 80 81 Building 82 -------- 83 84 Just type 'configure', 'make' and 'make install'. 85 86 Note that GNU make is required. On BSD it's available from devel/gmake; 87 on Solaris it's in the SUNWgmake package. On platforms where GNU make 88 isn't the default, type 'gmake' instead of 'make'. 89 90 Configure will print the enabled options. Note that on Linux based 91 platforms, the libaio development packages must be installed to use 92 the libaio engine. Depending on distro, it is usually called 93 libaio-devel or libaio-dev. 94 95 For gfio, gtk 2.18 (or newer), associated glib threads, and cairo are required 96 to be installed. gfio isn't built automatically and can be enabled 97 with a --enable-gfio option to configure. 98 99 To build FIO with a cross-compiler: 100 $ make clean 101 $ make CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/toolchain/prefix 102 Configure will attempt to determine the target platform automatically. 103 104 105 Windows 106 ------- 107 108 On Windows, Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is required in order to 109 build fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX 3.8 from 110 http://wixtoolset.org and run dobuild.cmd from the 111 os/windows directory. 112 113 How to compile fio on 64-bit Windows: 114 115 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). Install 'make' and all 116 packages starting with 'mingw64-i686' and 'mingw64-x86_64'. 117 2. Open the Cygwin Terminal. 118 3. Go to the fio directory (source files). 119 4. Run 'make clean && make -j'. 120 121 To build fio on 32-bit Windows, run './configure --build-32bit-win' before 'make'. 122 123 It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt 124 or other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display 125 and signal issues when running it under a Cygwin shell 126 (see http://code.google.com/p/mintty/issues/detail?id=56 for details). 127 128 129 Command line 130 ------------ 131 132 $ fio 133 --debug Enable some debugging options (see below) 134 --parse-only Parse options only, don't start any IO 135 --output Write output to file 136 --runtime Runtime in seconds 137 --latency-log Generate per-job latency logs 138 --bandwidth-log Generate per-job bandwidth logs 139 --minimal Minimal (terse) output 140 --output-format=type Output format (terse,json,normal) 141 --terse-version=type Terse version output format (default 3, or 2 or 4). 142 --version Print version info and exit 143 --help Print this page 144 --cpuclock-test Perform test/validation of CPU clock 145 --crctest[=test] Test speed of checksum functions 146 --cmdhelp=cmd Print command help, "all" for all of them 147 --enghelp=engine Print ioengine help, or list available ioengines 148 --enghelp=engine,cmd Print help for an ioengine cmd 149 --showcmd Turn a job file into command line options 150 --readonly Turn on safety read-only checks, preventing 151 writes 152 --eta=when When ETA estimate should be printed 153 May be "always", "never" or "auto" 154 --eta-newline=time Force a new line for every 'time' period passed 155 --status-interval=t Force full status dump every 't' period passed 156 --section=name Only run specified section in job file. 157 Multiple sections can be specified. 158 --alloc-size=kb Set smalloc pool to this size in kb (def 1024) 159 --warnings-fatal Fio parser warnings are fatal 160 --max-jobs Maximum number of threads/processes to support 161 --server=args Start backend server. See Client/Server section. 162 --client=host Connect to specified backend. 163 --idle-prof=option Report cpu idleness on a system or percpu basis 164 (option=system,percpu) or run unit work 165 calibration only (option=calibrate). 166 167 168 Any parameters following the options will be assumed to be job files, 169 unless they match a job file parameter. Multiple job files can be listed 170 and each job file will be regarded as a separate group. fio will stonewall 171 execution between each group. 172 173 The --readonly option is an extra safety guard to prevent users from 174 accidentally starting a write workload when that is not desired. Fio 175 will only write if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given. This extra 176 safety net can be used as an extra precaution as --readonly will also 177 enable a write check in the io engine core to prevent writes due to 178 unknown user space bug(s). 179 180 The --debug option triggers additional logging by fio. 181 Currently, additional logging is available for: 182 183 process Dump info related to processes 184 file Dump info related to file actions 185 io Dump info related to IO queuing 186 mem Dump info related to memory allocations 187 blktrace Dump info related to blktrace setup 188 verify Dump info related to IO verification 189 all Enable all debug options 190 random Dump info related to random offset generation 191 parse Dump info related to option matching and parsing 192 diskutil Dump info related to disk utilization updates 193 job:x Dump info only related to job number x 194 mutex Dump info only related to mutex up/down ops 195 profile Dump info related to profile extensions 196 time Dump info related to internal time keeping 197 net Dump info related to networking connections 198 rate Dump info related to IO rate switching 199 ? or help Show available debug options. 200 201 One can specify multiple debug options: e.g. --debug=file,mem will enable 202 file and memory debugging. 203 204 The --section option allows one to combine related jobs into one file. 205 E.g. one job file could define light, moderate, and heavy sections. Tell fio to 206 run only the "heavy" section by giving --section=heavy command line option. 207 One can also specify the "write" operations in one section and "verify" 208 operation in another section. The --section option only applies to job 209 sections. The reserved 'global' section is always parsed and used. 210 211 The --alloc-size switch allows one to use a larger pool size for smalloc. 212 If running large jobs with randommap enabled, fio can run out of memory. 213 Smalloc is an internal allocator for shared structures from a fixed size 214 memory pool. The pool size defaults to 1024k and can grow to 128 pools. 215 216 NOTE: While running .fio_smalloc.* backing store files are visible in /tmp. 217 218 219 Job file 220 -------- 221 222 See the HOWTO file for a complete description of job file syntax and 223 parameters. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If used with 224 an option argument, --cmdhelp will detail the given option. The job file 225 format is in the ini style format, as that is easy for the user to review 226 and modify. 227 228 This README contains the terse version. Job files can describe big and 229 complex setups that are not possible with the command line. Job files 230 are a good practice even for simple jobs since the file provides an 231 easily accessed record of the workload and can include comments. 232 233 See the examples/ directory for inspiration on how to write job files. Note 234 the copyright and license requirements currently apply to examples/ files. 235 236 237 Client/server 238 ------------ 239 240 Normally fio is invoked as a stand-alone application on the machine 241 where the IO workload should be generated. However, the frontend and 242 backend of fio can be run separately. Ie the fio server can generate 243 an IO workload on the "Device Under Test" while being controlled from 244 another machine. 245 246 Start the server on the machine which has access to the storage DUT: 247 248 fio --server=args 249 250 where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments are of the form 251 'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4) for TCP/IP v4, 252 'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket. 253 'hostname' is either a hostname or IP address, and 'port' is the port to 254 listen to (only valid for TCP/IP, not a local socket). Some examples: 255 256 1) fio --server 257 258 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on the default port (8765). 259 260 2) fio --server=ip:hostname,4444 261 262 Start a fio server, listening on IP belonging to hostname and on port 4444. 263 264 3) fio --server=ip6:::1,4444 265 266 Start a fio server, listening on IPv6 localhost ::1 and on port 4444. 267 268 4) fio --server=,4444 269 270 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on port 4444. 271 272 5) fio --server=1.2.3.4 273 274 Start a fio server, listening on IP 1.2.3.4 on the default port. 275 276 6) fio --server=sock:/tmp/fio.sock 277 278 Start a fio server, listening on the local socket /tmp/fio.sock. 279 280 Once a server is running, a "client" can connect to the fio server with: 281 282 fio --local-args --client=<server> --remote-args <job file(s)> 283 284 where --local-args are arguments for the client where it is 285 running, 'server' is the connect string, and --remote-args and <job file(s)> 286 are sent to the server. The 'server' string follows the same format as it 287 does on the server side, to allow IP/hostname/socket and port strings. 288 289 Fio can connect to multiple servers this way: 290 291 fio --client=<server1> <job file(s)> --client=<server2> <job file(s)> 292 293 294 Platforms 295 --------- 296 297 Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD, 298 Windows and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on 299 some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that 300 platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux). 301 302 Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be 303 implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is 304 disk utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that 305 does exist in FreeBSD/Solaris. 306 307 Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and FreeBSD does not 308 support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, only threads are 309 supported on FreeBSD. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or 310 other locking alternatives. 311 312 Other *BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out 313 of the box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms, 314 your mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly 315 appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool 316 available on all platforms. 317 318 Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these: 319 320 Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because: 321 Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix. 322 323 indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root: 324 325 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0 326 posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O 327 # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0 328 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0 329 posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O 330 331 POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent: 332 333 # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available' 334 posix_aio0 changed 335 336 337 Author 338 ------ 339 340 Fio was written by Jens Axboe <axboe (a] kernel.dk> to enable flexible testing 341 of the Linux IO subsystem and schedulers. He got tired of writing 342 specific test applications to simulate a given workload, and found that 343 the existing io benchmark/test tools out there weren't flexible enough 344 to do what he wanted. 345 346 Jens Axboe <axboe (a] kernel.dk> 20060905 347 348
