2 ## Overview and history
4 Fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test case
5 programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for performance
6 reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing such a test app can
7 be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often. Hence I needed a tool that
8 would be able to simulate a given I/O workload without resorting to writing a
9 tailored test case again and again.
11 A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number of
12 processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own way of
13 generating I/O. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of memory in a
14 memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing reads using asynchronous
15 I/O. fio needed to be flexible enough to simulate both of these cases, and many
18 Fio spawns a number of threads or processes doing a particular type of I/O
19 action as specified by the user. fio takes a number of global parameters, each
20 inherited by the thread unless otherwise parameters given to them overriding
21 that setting is given. The typical use of fio is to write a job file matching
22 the I/O load one wants to simulate.
27 Fio resides in a git repo, the canonical place is:
29 git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
31 When inside a corporate firewall, `git://` URL sometimes does not work.
32 If git:// does not work, use the http protocol instead:
34 http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
36 Snapshots are frequently generated and :file:`fio-git-*.tar.gz` include the git
37 meta data as well. Other tarballs are archives of official fio releases.
38 Snapshots can download from:
40 http://brick.kernel.dk/snaps/
42 There are also two official mirrors. Both of these are automatically synced with
43 the main repository, when changes are pushed. If the main repo is down for some
44 reason, either one of these is safe to use as a backup:
46 git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/fio.git
48 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/fio.git
52 git://github.com/axboe/fio.git
54 https://github.com/axboe/fio.git
60 The fio project mailing list is meant for anything related to fio including
61 general discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development. For bug reporting,
64 An automated mail detailing recent commits is automatically sent to the list at
65 most daily. The list address is fio@vger.kernel.org, subscribe by sending an
66 email to majordomo@vger.kernel.org with
70 in the body of the email. Archives can be found here:
72 http://www.spinics.net/lists/fio/
76 https://lore.kernel.org/fio/
78 and archives for the old list can be found here:
80 http://maillist.kernel.dk/fio-devel/
86 Fio was written by Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> to enable flexible testing of
87 the Linux I/O subsystem and schedulers. He got tired of writing specific test
88 applications to simulate a given workload, and found that the existing I/O
89 benchmark/test tools out there weren't flexible enough to do what he wanted.
91 Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> 20060905
97 Starting with Debian "Squeeze", fio packages are part of the official
98 Debian repository. http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fio .
101 Starting with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (aka "Lucid Lynx"), fio packages are part
102 of the Ubuntu "universe" repository.
103 http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=fio .
105 **Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS & Co:**
106 Starting with Fedora 9/Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 4, fio
107 packages are part of the Fedora/EPEL repositories.
108 https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/fio .
111 Mandriva has integrated fio into their package repository, so installing
112 on that distro should be as easy as typing ``urpmi fio``.
115 An Arch Linux package is provided under the Community sub-repository:
116 https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&q=fio
119 Packages for Solaris are available from OpenCSW. Install their pkgutil
120 tool (http://www.opencsw.org/get-it/pkgutil/) and then install fio via
124 Rebecca Cran <rebecca@bsdio.com> has fio packages for Windows at
125 https://bsdio.com/fio/ . The latest builds for Windows can also
126 be grabbed from https://ci.appveyor.com/project/axboe/fio by clicking
127 the latest x86 or x64 build, then selecting the ARTIFACTS tab.
130 Packages for BSDs may be available from their binary package repositories.
131 Look for a package "fio" using their binary package managers.
143 Note that GNU make is required. On BSDs it's available from devel/gmake within
144 ports directory; on Solaris it's in the SUNWgmake package. On platforms where
145 GNU make isn't the default, type ``gmake`` instead of ``make``.
147 Configure will print the enabled options. Note that on Linux based platforms,
148 the libaio development packages must be installed to use the libaio
149 engine. Depending on distro, it is usually called libaio-devel or libaio-dev.
151 For gfio, gtk 2.18 (or newer), associated glib threads, and cairo are required
152 to be installed. gfio isn't built automatically and can be enabled with a
153 ``--enable-gfio`` option to configure.
155 To build fio with a cross-compiler::
158 make CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/toolchain/prefix
160 Configure will attempt to determine the target platform automatically.
162 It's possible to build fio for ESX as well, use the ``--esx`` switch to
169 The minimum versions of Windows for building/runing fio are Windows 7/Windows
170 Server 2008 R2. On Windows, Cygwin (https://www.cygwin.com/) is required in
171 order to build fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX from
172 https://wixtoolset.org and run :file:`dobuild.cmd` from the :file:`os/windows`
175 ### How to compile fio on 64-bit Windows:
177 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). Install **make** and all
178 packages starting with **mingw64-x86_64**. Ensure
179 **mingw64-x86_64-zlib** are installed if you wish
180 to enable fio's log compression functionality.
181 2. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
182 3. Go to the fio directory (source files).
183 4. Run ``make clean && make -j``.
185 To build fio for 32-bit Windows, ensure the -i686 versions of the previously
186 mentioned -x86_64 packages are installed and run ``./configure
187 --build-32bit-win`` before ``make``.
189 It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt or
190 other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display and
191 signal issues when running it under a Cygwin shell (see
192 https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/56 and
193 https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#inputoutput-interaction-with-alien-programs
200 Fio uses Sphinx_ to generate documentation from the reStructuredText_ files.
201 To build HTML formatted documentation run ``make -C doc html`` and direct your
202 browser to :file:`./doc/output/html/index.html`. To build manual page run
203 ``make -C doc man`` and then ``man doc/output/man/fio.1``. To see what other
204 output formats are supported run ``make -C doc help``.
206 .. _reStructuredText: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/rest.html
207 .. _Sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org
213 Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
214 Windows, FreeBSD, and DragonFly. Some features and/or options may only be
215 available on some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply
216 to that platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
218 Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
219 implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is disk
220 utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that does exist
223 Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and some platforms do not
224 support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, on such platforms only
225 threads are supported. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or other
226 locking alternatives.
228 Other \*BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out of the
229 box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms, your
230 mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly
231 appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
232 available on all platforms.
234 Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these::
236 Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
237 Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
239 indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root::
241 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
242 posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
243 # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0
244 # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
245 posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O
247 POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent::
249 # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available'
256 Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
257 (or job files) as parameters::
259 $ fio [options] [jobfile] ...
261 and it will start doing what the *jobfile* tells it to do. You can give more
262 than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running of those
263 files. Internally that is the same as using the :option:`stonewall` parameter
264 described in the parameter section.
266 If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the parameters
267 on the command line. The command line parameters are identical to the job
268 parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters. For example, for
269 the job file parameter :option:`iodepth=2 <iodepth>`, the mirror command line
270 option would be :option:`--iodepth 2 <iodepth>` or :option:`--iodepth=2
271 <iodepth>`. You can also use the command line for giving more than one job
272 entry. For each :option:`--name <name>` option that fio sees, it will start a
273 new job with that name. Command line entries following a
274 :option:`--name <name>` entry will apply to that job, until there are no more
275 entries or a new :option:`--name <name>` entry is seen. This is similar to the
276 job file options, where each option applies to the current job until a new []
279 fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified in
280 the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted, such
281 as memory locking, I/O scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
283 If *jobfile* is specified as ``-``, the job file will be read from standard