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 If you are inside a corporate firewall, git:// may not always work for
20 you. In that case you can use the http protocol, path is the same:
22 http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
24 Snapshots are frequently generated and they include the git meta data as
25 well. You can download them here:
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 There's a mailing list associated with fio. It's meant for general
64 discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development - basically anything
65 that has to do with fio. An automated mail detailing recent commits is
66 automatically sent to the list at most daily. The list address is
67 fio@vger.kernel.org, subscribe by sending an email to
68 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, you'll need to have the libaio development packages
92 installed to use the libaio engine. Depending on distro, it is
93 usually called libaio-devel or libaio-dev.
95 For gfio, you need gtk 2.18 or newer and associated glib threads
96 and cairo. gfio isn't built automatically, it needs to be enabled
97 with a --enable-gfio option to configure.
103 On Windows Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is required in order to
104 build fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX 3.7 from
105 http://wixtoolset.org and run dobuild.cmd from the
106 os/windows directory.
108 How to compile FIO on 64-bit Windows:
110 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe). Install 'make' and all
111 packages starting with 'mingw64-i686' and 'mingw64-x86_64'.
112 2. Download ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/prebuilt-dll-2-9-1-release/dll/x64/pthreadGC2.dll
113 and copy to the fio source directory.
114 3. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
115 4. Go to the fio directory (source files).
119 To build fio on 32-bit Windows, download x86/pthreadGC2.dll instead and do
120 './configure --build-32bit-win=yes' before 'make'.
122 It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt
123 or other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display
124 and signal issues when running it under a Cygwin shell
125 (see http://code.google.com/p/mintty/issues/detail?id=56 for details).
132 --debug Enable some debugging options (see below)
133 --parse-only Parse options only, don't start any IO
134 --output Write output to file
135 --runtime Runtime in seconds
136 --latency-log Generate per-job latency logs
137 --bandwidth-log Generate per-job bandwidth logs
138 --minimal Minimal (terse) output
139 --output-format=type Output format (terse,json,normal)
140 --terse-version=type Terse version output format (default 3, or 2 or 4).
141 --version Print version info and exit
142 --help Print this page
143 --cpuclock-test Perform test/validation of CPU clock
144 --cmdhelp=cmd Print command help, "all" for all of them
145 --enghelp=engine Print ioengine help, or list available ioengines
146 --enghelp=engine,cmd Print help for an ioengine cmd
147 --showcmd Turn a job file into command line options
148 --readonly Turn on safety read-only checks, preventing
150 --eta=when When ETA estimate should be printed
151 May be "always", "never" or "auto"
152 --eta-newline=time Force a new line for every 'time' period passed
153 --section=name Only run specified section in job file.
154 Multiple sections can be specified.
155 --alloc-size=kb Set smalloc pool to this size in kb (def 1024)
156 --warnings-fatal Fio parser warnings are fatal
157 --max-jobs Maximum number of threads/processes to support
158 --server=args Start backend server. See Client/Server section.
159 --client=host Connect to specified backend.
160 --idle-prof=option Report cpu idleness on a system or percpu basis
161 (option=system,percpu) or run unit work
162 calibration only (option=calibrate).
165 Any parameters following the options will be assumed to be job files,
166 unless they match a job file parameter. You can add as many as you want,
167 each job file will be regarded as a separate group and fio will stonewall
170 The --readonly switch is an extra safety guard to prevent accidentally
171 turning on a write setting when that is not desired. Fio will only write
172 if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given, but this extra safety net can
173 be used as an extra precaution. It will also enable a write check in the
174 io engine core to prevent an accidental write due to a fio bug.
176 The debug switch allows adding options that trigger certain logging
177 options in fio. Currently the options are:
179 process Dump info related to processes
180 file Dump info related to file actions
181 io Dump info related to IO queuing
182 mem Dump info related to memory allocations
183 blktrace Dump info related to blktrace setup
184 verify Dump info related to IO verification
185 all Enable all debug options
186 random Dump info related to random offset generation
187 parse Dump info related to option matching and parsing
188 diskutil Dump info related to disk utilization updates
189 job:x Dump info only related to job number x
190 mutex Dump info only related to mutex up/down ops
191 profile Dump info related to profile extensions
192 time Dump info related to internal time keeping
193 ? or help Show available debug options.
195 You can specify as many as you want, eg --debug=file,mem will enable
196 file and memory debugging.
198 The section switch is meant to make it easier to ship a bigger job file
199 instead of several smaller ones. Say you define a job file with light,
200 moderate, and heavy parts. Then you can ask fio to run the given part
201 only by giving it a --section=heavy command line option. The section
202 option only applies to job sections, the reserved 'global' section is
203 always parsed and taken into account.
205 Fio has an internal allocator for shared memory called smalloc. It
206 allocates shared structures from this pool. The pool defaults to 1024k
207 in size, and can grow to 128 pools. If running large jobs with randommap
208 enabled it can run out of memory, in which case the --alloc-size switch
209 is handy for starting with a larger pool size. The backing store is
210 files in /tmp. Fio cleans up after itself, while it is running you
211 may see .fio_smalloc.* files in /tmp.
217 See the HOWTO file for a more detailed description of parameters and what
218 they mean. This file contains the terse version. You can describe big and
219 complex setups with the command line, but generally it's a lot easier to
220 just write a simple job file to describe the workload. The job file format
221 is in the ini style format, as that is easy to read and write for the user.
223 The HOWTO or man page has a full list of all options, along with
224 descriptions, etc. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If
225 used with an option argument, it will detail that particular option.
231 Normally you would run fio as a stand-alone application on the machine
232 where the IO workload should be generated. However, it is also possible to
233 run the frontend and backend of fio separately. This makes it possible to
234 have a fio server running on the machine(s) where the IO workload should
235 be running, while controlling it from another machine.
237 To start the server, you would do:
241 on that machine, where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments
242 are of the form 'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4)
243 for TCP/IP v4, 'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket.
244 'hostname' is either a hostname or IP address, and 'port' is the port to
245 listen to (only valid for TCP/IP, not a local socket). Some examples:
249 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on the default port (8765).
251 2) fio --server=ip:hostname,4444
253 Start a fio server, listening on IP belonging to hostname and on port 4444.
255 3) fio --server=ip6:::1,4444
257 Start a fio server, listening on IPv6 localhost ::1 and on port 4444.
259 4) fio --server=,4444
261 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on port 4444.
263 5) fio --server=1.2.3.4
265 Start a fio server, listening on IP 1.2.3.4 on the default port.
267 6) fio --server=sock:/tmp/fio.sock
269 Start a fio server, listening on the local socket /tmp/fio.sock.
271 When a server is running, you can connect to it from a client. The client
274 fio --local-args --client=server --remote-args <job file(s)>
276 where --local-args are arguments that are local to the client where it is
277 running, 'server' is the connect string, and --remote-args and <job file(s)>
278 are sent to the server. The 'server' string follows the same format as it
279 does on the server side, to allow IP/hostname/socket and port strings.
280 You can connect to multiple clients as well, to do that you could run:
282 fio --client=server2 <job file(s)> --client=server2 <job file(s)>
288 Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, Windows
289 and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on some of
290 the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that platform
291 (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
293 Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
294 implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is
295 disk utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that
296 does exist in FreeBSD/Solaris.
298 Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and FreeBSD does not
299 support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, only threads are
300 supported on FreeBSD. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or
301 other locking alternatives.
303 Other *BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out
304 of the box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms,
305 your mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly
306 appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
307 available on all platforms.
309 Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. If you get messages like:
311 Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
312 Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
314 you need to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root:
316 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
317 posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
318 # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0
319 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
320 posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O
322 POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent:
324 # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available'
331 Fio was written by Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> to enable flexible testing
332 of the Linux IO subsystem and schedulers. He got tired of writing
333 specific test applications to simulate a given workload, and found that
334 the existing io benchmark/test tools out there weren't flexible enough
335 to do what he wanted.
337 Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> 20060905