1 iowatcher graphs the results of a blktrace run. It has a few different modes:
3 * Graph the result of an existing blktrace
7 * Start a new blktrace and a benchmark run
9 * Make a movie of the IO from a given trace (only mp4 for now)
13 iowatcher can produce either svg files or mp4 movies. Most browsers
14 can view the svg files, or you can use rsvg-view-3 from librsvg.
15 rsvg-convert can turn the svgs into many other formats.
19 Type make and make install. We need ffmpeg or png2theora, and
20 librsvg to make movies, otherwise there are no dependencies.
24 -d controls which device you are tracing. You can only trace one device
25 at a time for now. It is sent directly to blktrace, and only
26 needed when you are making a new trace.
28 -t controls the name of the blktrace file. iowatcher uses a dump from
29 blkparse, so -t tries to guess the name of the corresponding
30 per CPU blktrace data files if the dump file doesn't already exist.
32 If you want more than one trace in a given graph, you can specify
35 -F Add a fio bandwidth log graph. You need to run fio --bandwidth-log
36 to get one of these, and then pass either the read log or the write
39 -l Sets a label in the graph for a trace file. The labels are added in
40 the same order the trace files are added.
42 -m Create a movie. The file format depends on the extension used in the
43 -o filename.* option. If you specify an .ogv or .ogg extension, the
44 result will be Ogg Theora video, if png2theora is available.
45 If you use an .mp4 extension, the result will be an mp4 video if
46 ffmpeg is avilable. You can use any other extension, but the end
47 result will be an mp4.
49 You can use --movie=spindle or --movie=rect, which changes the
50 style of the IO mapping.
52 -T Set a title for the graph. This goes at the top of the image.
54 -o output filename. The default is trace.svg. iowatcher is
55 only able to create svg for now.
57 -r control the duration in seconds for the rolling average.
58 iowatcher tries to smooth out bumpy graphs by averaging the
59 current second with seconds from the past. Longer numbers here
60 give you flatter graphs.
62 -P add per-process tags to the IO. Each process responsible for
63 submitting the IO gets a different color.
65 -O add a single graph to the output. By default all the graphs
66 are included, but with -O you get only the graphs you ask for.
67 -O may be used more than once.
69 -N remove a single graph from the output. This may also be used more
72 Choices for -O and -N are:
73 io, fio, tput, latency, queue_depth, iops, cpu-sys, cpu-io,
74 cpu-irq, cpu-user, cpu-soft
78 # generate graph from the existing trace.dump
79 iowatcher -t trace.dump -o trace.svg
82 iowatcher -t trace.dump -o trace.svg -N io
84 # only graph tput and latency
85 iowatcher -t trace.dump -o trace.svg -O tput -O latency
87 # generate a graph from two runs, and label them
88 iowatcher -t ext4.dump -t xfs.dump -l Ext4 -l XFS -o trace.svg
90 # Run a fio benchmark and store the trace in trace.dump
91 # add a title to the top. Use /dev/sda for blktrace
92 iowatcher -d /dev/sda -t trace.dump -T 'Fio Benchmark' -p 'fio some_job_file'
94 # Make a movie from an existing trace
95 iowatcher -t trace --movie -o trace.mp4
97 Please email chris.mason@fusionio.com with any questions