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
15 fio resides in a git repo, the canonical place is:
17 git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
19 When inside a corporate firewall, git:// URL sometimes does not work.
20 If git:// does not work, use the http protocol instead:
22 http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
24 Snapshots are frequently generated and include the git meta data as well.
25 Snapshots can download from:
27 http://brick.kernel.dk/snaps/
34 Starting with Debian "Squeeze", fio packages are part of the official
35 Debian repository. http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fio
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
43 Dag Wieƫrs has RPMs for Red Hat related distros, find them here:
44 http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/fio/
47 Mandriva has integrated fio into their package repository, so installing
48 on that distro should be as easy as typing 'urpmi fio'.
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
56 Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk> has fio packages for Windows at
57 http://www.bluestop.org/fio/ .
63 The fio project mailing list is meant for anything related to fio including
64 general discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development.
66 An automated mail detailing recent commits is automatically sent to the
67 list at most daily. The list address is fio@vger.kernel.org, subscribe
68 by sending an email to majordomo@vger.kernel.org with
72 in the body of the email. Archives can be found here:
74 http://www.spinics.net/lists/fio/
76 and archives for the old list can be found here:
78 http://maillist.kernel.dk/fio-devel/
84 Just type 'configure', 'make' and 'make install'.
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'.
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.
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.
99 To build FIO with a cross-compiler:
101 $ make CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/toolchain/prefix
102 Configure will attempt to determine the target platform automatically.
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.
113 How to compile fio on 64-bit Windows:
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'.
121 To build fio on 32-bit Windows, run './configure --build-32bit-win' before 'make'.
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).
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 --cmdhelp=cmd Print command help, "all" for all of them
146 --enghelp=engine Print ioengine help, or list available ioengines
147 --enghelp=engine,cmd Print help for an ioengine cmd
148 --showcmd Turn a job file into command line options
149 --readonly Turn on safety read-only checks, preventing
151 --eta=when When ETA estimate should be printed
152 May be "always", "never" or "auto"
153 --eta-newline=time Force a new line for every 'time' period passed
154 --status-interval=t Force full status dump every 't' period passed
155 --section=name Only run specified section in job file.
156 Multiple sections can be specified.
157 --alloc-size=kb Set smalloc pool to this size in kb (def 1024)
158 --warnings-fatal Fio parser warnings are fatal
159 --max-jobs Maximum number of threads/processes to support
160 --server=args Start backend server. See Client/Server section.
161 --client=host Connect to specified backend.
162 --idle-prof=option Report cpu idleness on a system or percpu basis
163 (option=system,percpu) or run unit work
164 calibration only (option=calibrate).
167 Any parameters following the options will be assumed to be job files,
168 unless they match a job file parameter. Multiple job files can be listed
169 and each job file will be regarded as a separate group. fio will stonewall
170 execution between each group.
172 The --readonly option is an extra safety guard to prevent users from
173 accidentally starting a write workload when that is not desired. Fio
174 will only write if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given. This extra
175 safety net can be used as an extra precaution as --readonly will also
176 enable a write check in the io engine core to prevent writes due to
177 unknown user space bug(s).
179 The --debug option triggers additional logging by fio.
180 Currently, additional logging is available for:
182 process Dump info related to processes
183 file Dump info related to file actions
184 io Dump info related to IO queuing
185 mem Dump info related to memory allocations
186 blktrace Dump info related to blktrace setup
187 verify Dump info related to IO verification
188 all Enable all debug options
189 random Dump info related to random offset generation
190 parse Dump info related to option matching and parsing
191 diskutil Dump info related to disk utilization updates
192 job:x Dump info only related to job number x
193 mutex Dump info only related to mutex up/down ops
194 profile Dump info related to profile extensions
195 time Dump info related to internal time keeping
196 net Dump info related to networking connections
197 rate Dump info related to IO rate switching
198 ? or help Show available debug options.
200 One can specify multiple debug options: e.g. --debug=file,mem will enable
201 file and memory debugging.
203 The --section option allows one to combine related jobs into one file.
204 E.g. one job file could define light, moderate, and heavy sections. Tell fio to
205 run only the "heavy" section by giving --section=heavy command line option.
206 One can also specify the "write" operations in one section and "verify"
207 operation in another section. The --section option only applies to job
208 sections. The reserved 'global' section is always parsed and used.
210 The --alloc-size switch allows one to use a larger pool size for smalloc.
211 If running large jobs with randommap enabled, fio can run out of memory.
212 Smalloc is an internal allocator for shared structures from a fixed size
213 memory pool. The pool size defaults to 1024k and can grow to 128 pools.
215 NOTE: While running .fio_smalloc.* backing store files are visible in /tmp.
221 See the HOWTO file for a complete description of job file syntax and
222 parameters. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If used with
223 an option argument, --cmdhelp will detail the given option. The job file
224 format is in the ini style format, as that is easy for the user to review
227 This README contains the terse version. Job files can describe big and
228 complex setups that are not possible with the command line. Job files
229 are a good practice even for simple jobs since the file provides an
230 easily accessed record of the workload and can include comments.
232 See the examples/ directory for inspiration on how to write job files. Note
233 the copyright and license requirements currently apply to examples/ files.
239 Normally fio is invoked as a stand-alone application on the machine
240 where the IO workload should be generated. However, the frontend and
241 backend of fio can be run separately. Ie the fio server can generate
242 an IO workload on the "Device Under Test" while being controlled from
245 Start the server on the machine which has access to the storage DUT:
249 where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments are of the form
250 'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4) for TCP/IP v4,
251 'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket.
252 'hostname' is either a hostname or IP address, and 'port' is the port to
253 listen to (only valid for TCP/IP, not a local socket). Some examples:
257 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on the default port (8765).
259 2) fio --server=ip:hostname,4444
261 Start a fio server, listening on IP belonging to hostname and on port 4444.
263 3) fio --server=ip6:::1,4444
265 Start a fio server, listening on IPv6 localhost ::1 and on port 4444.
267 4) fio --server=,4444
269 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on port 4444.
271 5) fio --server=1.2.3.4
273 Start a fio server, listening on IP 1.2.3.4 on the default port.
275 6) fio --server=sock:/tmp/fio.sock
277 Start a fio server, listening on the local socket /tmp/fio.sock.
279 Once a server is running, a "client" can connect to the fio server with:
281 fio --local-args --client=<server> --remote-args <job file(s)>
283 where --local-args are arguments for the client where it is
284 running, 'server' is the connect string, and --remote-args and <job file(s)>
285 are sent to the server. The 'server' string follows the same format as it
286 does on the server side, to allow IP/hostname/socket and port strings.
288 Fio can connect to multiple servers this way:
290 fio --client=<server1> <job file(s)> --client=<server2> <job file(s)>
296 Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
297 Windows and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on
298 some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that
299 platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
301 Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
302 implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is
303 disk utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that
304 does exist in FreeBSD/Solaris.
306 Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and FreeBSD does not
307 support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, only threads are
308 supported on FreeBSD. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or
309 other locking alternatives.
311 Other *BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out
312 of the box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms,
313 your mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly
314 appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
315 available on all platforms.
317 Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these:
319 Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
320 Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
322 indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root:
324 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
325 posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
326 # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0
327 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
328 posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O
330 POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent:
332 # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available'
339 Fio was written by Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> to enable flexible testing
340 of the Linux IO subsystem and schedulers. He got tired of writing
341 specific test applications to simulate a given workload, and found that
342 the existing io benchmark/test tools out there weren't flexible enough
343 to do what he wanted.
345 Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> 20060905