+
+Binary packages
+---------------
+
+Debian:
+ Starting with Debian "Squeeze", fio packages are part of the official
+ Debian repository. http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fio .
+
+Ubuntu:
+ Starting with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (aka "Lucid Lynx"), fio packages are part
+ of the Ubuntu "universe" repository.
+ http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=fio .
+
+Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS & Co:
+ Starting with Fedora 9/Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 4, fio
+ packages are part of the Fedora/EPEL repositories.
+ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/package/rpms/fio/ .
+
+Mandriva:
+ Mandriva has integrated fio into their package repository, so installing
+ on that distro should be as easy as typing ``urpmi fio``.
+
+Solaris:
+ Packages for Solaris are available from OpenCSW. Install their pkgutil
+ tool (http://www.opencsw.org/get-it/pkgutil/) and then install fio via
+ ``pkgutil -i fio``.
+
+Windows:
+ Rebecca Cran <rebecca+fio@bluestop.org> has fio packages for Windows at
+ http://www.bluestop.org/fio/ .
+
+BSDs:
+ Packages for BSDs may be available from their binary package repositories.
+ Look for a package "fio" using their binary package managers.
+
+
+Building
+--------
+
+Just type::
+
+ $ ./configure
+ $ make
+ $ make install
+
+Note that GNU make is required. On BSDs it's available from devel/gmake within
+ports directory; on Solaris it's in the SUNWgmake package. On platforms where
+GNU make isn't the default, type ``gmake`` instead of ``make``.
+
+Configure will print the enabled options. Note that on Linux based platforms,
+the libaio development packages must be installed to use the libaio
+engine. Depending on distro, it is usually called libaio-devel or libaio-dev.
+
+For gfio, gtk 2.18 (or newer), associated glib threads, and cairo are required
+to be installed. gfio isn't built automatically and can be enabled with a
+``--enable-gfio`` option to configure.
+
+To build fio with a cross-compiler::
+
+ $ make clean
+ $ make CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/toolchain/prefix
+
+Configure will attempt to determine the target platform automatically.
+
+It's possible to build fio for ESX as well, use the ``--esx`` switch to
+configure.
+
+
+Windows
+~~~~~~~
+
+On Windows, Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is required in order to build
+fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX 3.8 from
+http://wixtoolset.org and run :file:`dobuild.cmd` from the :file:`os/windows`
+directory.
+
+How to compile fio on 64-bit Windows:
+
+ 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). Install **make** and all
+ packages starting with **mingw64-i686** and **mingw64-x86_64**.
+ 2. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
+ 3. Go to the fio directory (source files).
+ 4. Run ``make clean && make -j``.
+
+To build fio on 32-bit Windows, run ``./configure --build-32bit-win`` before
+``make``.
+
+It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt or
+other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display and
+signal issues when running it under a Cygwin shell (see
+http://code.google.com/p/mintty/issues/detail?id=56 for details).
+
+
+Documentation
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Fio uses Sphinx_ to generate documentation from the reStructuredText_ files.
+To build HTML formatted documentation run ``make -C doc html`` and direct your
+browser to :file:`./doc/output/html/index.html`. To build manual page run
+``make -C doc man`` and then ``man doc/output/man/fio.1``. To see what other
+output formats are supported run ``make -C doc help``.
+
+.. _reStructuredText: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/rest.html
+.. _Sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org
+
+
+Platforms
+---------
+
+Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
+Windows, FreeBSD, and DragonFly. Some features and/or options may only be
+available on some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply
+to that platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
+
+Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
+implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is disk
+utility statistics and (I think) huge page support, support for that does exist
+in FreeBSD/Solaris.
+
+Fio uses pthread mutexes for signalling and locking and some platforms do not
+support process shared pthread mutexes. As a result, on such platforms only
+threads are supported. This could be fixed with sysv ipc locking or other
+locking alternatives.
+
+Other \*BSD platforms are untested, but fio should work there almost out of the
+box. Since I don't do test runs or even compiles on those platforms, your
+mileage may vary. Sending me patches for other platforms is greatly
+appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
+available on all platforms.
+
+Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these::
+
+ Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
+ Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
+
+indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root::
+
+ # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
+ posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
+ # cfgmgr -l posix_aio0
+ # lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
+ posix_aio0 Available Posix Asynchronous I/O
+
+POSIX aio should work now. To make the change permanent::
+
+ # chdev -l posix_aio0 -P -a autoconfig='available'
+ posix_aio0 changed
+
+
+Running fio
+-----------
+
+Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
+(or job files) as parameters::
+
+ $ fio [options] [jobfile] ...
+
+and it will start doing what the *jobfile* tells it to do. You can give more
+than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running of those
+files. Internally that is the same as using the :option:`stonewall` parameter
+described in the parameter section.
+
+If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the parameters
+on the command line. The command line parameters are identical to the job
+parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters. For example, for
+the job file parameter :option:`iodepth=2 <iodepth>`, the mirror command line
+option would be :option:`--iodepth 2 <iodepth>` or :option:`--iodepth=2
+<iodepth>`. You can also use the command line for giving more than one job
+entry. For each :option:`--name <name>` option that fio sees, it will start a
+new job with that name. Command line entries following a
+:option:`--name <name>` entry will apply to that job, until there are no more
+entries or a new :option:`--name <name>` entry is seen. This is similar to the
+job file options, where each option applies to the current job until a new []
+job entry is seen.
+
+fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified in
+the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted, such
+as memory locking, I/O scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
+
+If *jobfile* is specified as ``-``, the job file will be read from standard
+input.