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 3.7 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/setup.exe). Install 'make' and all
116 packages starting with 'mingw64-i686' and 'mingw64-x86_64'.
117 2. Download ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/prebuilt-dll-2-9-1-release/dll/x64/pthreadGC2.dll
118 and copy to the fio source directory.
119 3. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
120 4. Go to the fio directory (source files).
124 To build fio on 32-bit Windows, download x86/pthreadGC2.dll instead and do
125 './configure --build-32bit-win=yes' before 'make'.
127 It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt
128 or other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display
129 and signal issues when running it under a Cygwin shell
130 (see http://code.google.com/p/mintty/issues/detail?id=56 for details).
137 --debug Enable some debugging options (see below)
138 --parse-only Parse options only, don't start any IO
139 --output Write output to file
140 --runtime Runtime in seconds
141 --latency-log Generate per-job latency logs
142 --bandwidth-log Generate per-job bandwidth logs
143 --minimal Minimal (terse) output
144 --output-format=type Output format (terse,json,normal)
145 --terse-version=type Terse version output format (default 3, or 2 or 4).
146 --version Print version info and exit
147 --help Print this page
148 --cpuclock-test Perform test/validation of CPU clock
149 --cmdhelp=cmd Print command help, "all" for all of them
150 --enghelp=engine Print ioengine help, or list available ioengines
151 --enghelp=engine,cmd Print help for an ioengine cmd
152 --showcmd Turn a job file into command line options
153 --readonly Turn on safety read-only checks, preventing
155 --eta=when When ETA estimate should be printed
156 May be "always", "never" or "auto"
157 --eta-newline=time Force a new line for every 'time' period passed
158 --status-interval=t Force full status dump every 't' period passed
159 --section=name Only run specified section in job file.
160 Multiple sections can be specified.
161 --alloc-size=kb Set smalloc pool to this size in kb (def 1024)
162 --warnings-fatal Fio parser warnings are fatal
163 --max-jobs Maximum number of threads/processes to support
164 --server=args Start backend server. See Client/Server section.
165 --client=host Connect to specified backend.
166 --idle-prof=option Report cpu idleness on a system or percpu basis
167 (option=system,percpu) or run unit work
168 calibration only (option=calibrate).
171 Any parameters following the options will be assumed to be job files,
172 unless they match a job file parameter. Multiple job files can be listed
173 and each job file will be regarded as a separate group. fio will stonewall
174 execution between each group.
176 The --readonly option is an extra safety guard to prevent users from
177 accidentally starting a write workload when that is not desired. Fio
178 will only write if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given. This extra
179 safety net can be used as an extra precaution as --readonly will also
180 enable a write check in the io engine core to prevent writes due to
181 unknown user space bug(s).
183 The --debug option triggers additional logging by fio.
184 Currently, additional logging is available for:
186 process Dump info related to processes
187 file Dump info related to file actions
188 io Dump info related to IO queuing
189 mem Dump info related to memory allocations
190 blktrace Dump info related to blktrace setup
191 verify Dump info related to IO verification
192 all Enable all debug options
193 random Dump info related to random offset generation
194 parse Dump info related to option matching and parsing
195 diskutil Dump info related to disk utilization updates
196 job:x Dump info only related to job number x
197 mutex Dump info only related to mutex up/down ops
198 profile Dump info related to profile extensions
199 time Dump info related to internal time keeping
200 net Dump info related to networking connections
201 rate Dump info related to IO rate switching
202 ? or help Show available debug options.
204 One can specify multiple debug options: e.g. --debug=file,mem will enable
205 file and memory debugging.
207 The --section option allows one to combine related jobs into one file.
208 E.g. one job file could define light, moderate, and heavy sections. Tell fio to
209 run only the "heavy" section by giving --section=heavy command line option.
210 One can also specify the "write" operations in one section and "verify"
211 operation in another section. The --section option only applies to job
212 sections. The reserved 'global' section is always parsed and used.
214 The --alloc-size switch allows one to use a larger pool size for smalloc.
215 If running large jobs with randommap enabled, fio can run out of memory.
216 Smalloc is an internal allocator for shared structures from a fixed size
217 memory pool. The pool size defaults to 1024k and can grow to 128 pools.
219 NOTE: While running .fio_smalloc.* backing store files are visible in /tmp.
225 See the HOWTO file for a complete description of job file syntax and
226 parameters. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If used with
227 an option argument, --cmdhelp will detail the given option. The job file
228 format is in the ini style format, as that is easy for the user to review
231 This README contains the terse version. Job files can describe big and
232 complex setups that are not possible with the command line. Job files
233 are a good practice even for simple jobs since the file provides an
234 easily accessed record of the workload and can include comments.
236 See the examples/ directory for inspiration on how to write job files. Note
237 the copyright and license requirements currently apply to examples/ files.
243 Normally fio is invoked as a stand-alone application on the machine
244 where the IO workload should be generated. However, the frontend and
245 backend of fio can be run separately. Ie the fio server can generate
246 an IO workload on the "Device Under Test" while being controlled from
249 Start the server on the machine which has access to the storage DUT:
253 where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments are of the form
254 'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4) for TCP/IP v4,
255 'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket.
256 'hostname' is either a hostname or IP address, and 'port' is the port to
257 listen to (only valid for TCP/IP, not a local socket). Some examples:
261 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on the default port (8765).
263 2) fio --server=ip:hostname,4444
265 Start a fio server, listening on IP belonging to hostname and on port 4444.
267 3) fio --server=ip6:::1,4444
269 Start a fio server, listening on IPv6 localhost ::1 and on port 4444.
271 4) fio --server=,4444
273 Start a fio server, listening on all interfaces on port 4444.
275 5) fio --server=1.2.3.4
277 Start a fio server, listening on IP 1.2.3.4 on the default port.
279 6) fio --server=sock:/tmp/fio.sock
281 Start a fio server, listening on the local socket /tmp/fio.sock.
283 Once a server is running, a "client" can connect to the fio server with:
285 fio --local-args --client=<server> --remote-args <job file(s)>
287 where --local-args are arguments for the client where it is
288 running, 'server' is the connect string, and --remote-args and <job file(s)>
289 are sent to the server. The 'server' string follows the same format as it
290 does on the server side, to allow IP/hostname/socket and port strings.
292 Fio can connect to multiple servers this way:
294 fio --client=<server1> <job file(s)> --client=<server2> <job file(s)>
300 Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
301 Windows and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on
302 some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that
303 platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
305 Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
306 implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is
307 disk utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that
308 does exist in FreeBSD/Solaris.
310 Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and FreeBSD does not
311 support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, only threads are
312 supported on FreeBSD. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or
313 other locking alternatives.
315 Other *BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out
316 of the box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms,
317 your mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly
318 appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
319 available on all platforms.
321 Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these:
323 Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
324 Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
326 indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root:
328 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
329 posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
330 # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0
331 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
332 posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O
334 POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent:
336 # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available'
343 Fio was written by Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> to enable flexible testing
344 of the Linux IO subsystem and schedulers. He got tired of writing
345 specific test applications to simulate a given workload, and found that
346 the existing io benchmark/test tools out there weren't flexible enough
347 to do what he wanted.
349 Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> 20060905