t/dedupe: silence bogus warning on 'bytes' being used uninitialized
[fio.git] / HOWTO
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1Table of contents
2-----------------
3
41. Overview
52. How fio works
63. Running fio
74. Job file format
85. Detailed list of parameters
96. Normal output
107. Terse output
25c8b9d7 118. Trace file format
43f09da1 129. CPU idleness profiling
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13
141.0 Overview and history
15------------------------
16fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
17case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
18performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
19such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
20Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
21without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
22
23A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
24of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
25way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
26memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
27reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
28simulate both of these cases, and many more.
29
302.0 How fio works
31-----------------
32The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
33writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
34any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
35is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
36sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
37and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
38bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
39
40 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
41 We may only be reading sequentially from this
42 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
43 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
44
45 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
46 a single value, or it may describe a range of
47 block sizes.
48
49 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
50
51 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
52 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 53 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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54 SG (SCSI generic sg).
55
6c219763 56 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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57 depth do we want to maintain?
58
59 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
60
61 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
62
63 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
64 this workload over.
66c098b8 65
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66The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
67there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
68job behaves.
69
70
713.0 Running fio
72---------------
73See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
74of them.
75
76Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
77(or job files) as parameters:
78
79$ fio job_file
80
81and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
82more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
83of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
550b1db6 84parameter described in the parameter section.
71bfa161 85
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86If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
87parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
88to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
89(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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90mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
91also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
92--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
93Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
94until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
95similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
96job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 97
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98fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
99in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 100such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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101
102
1034.0 Job file format
104-------------------
105As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
106what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
107where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
108to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
109A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
110may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
111several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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112section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
113'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 114
3c54bc46 115So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 116randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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117
118; -- start job file --
119[global]
120rw=randread
121size=128m
122
123[job1]
124
125[job2]
126
127; -- end job file --
128
129As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
130described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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131makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
132line, this job would look as follows:
133
134$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
135
71bfa161 136
3c54bc46 137Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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138to files.
139
140; -- start job file --
141[random-writers]
142ioengine=libaio
143iodepth=4
144rw=randwrite
145bs=32k
146direct=0
147size=64m
148numjobs=4
149
150; -- end job file --
151
152Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
153We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 154increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 155fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 156to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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157have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
158specify:
159
160$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 161
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162When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
163desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
164Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
165.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
166
167; -- start job file including.fio --
168[global]
169filename=/tmp/test
170filesize=1m
171include glob-include.fio
172
173[test]
174rw=randread
175bs=4k
176time_based=1
177runtime=10
178include test-include.fio
179; -- end job file including.fio --
180
181; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
182thread=1
183group_reporting=1
184; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
185
186; -- start job file test-include.fio --
187ioengine=libaio
188iodepth=4
189; -- end job file test-include.fio --
190
191Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
192section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
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193contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
194sections.
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195
196
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1974.1 Environment variables
198-------------------------
199
3c54bc46 200fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
4fbe1860 201sub-string of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
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202words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
203environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
204is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
205substituted.
206
207As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
208
209$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
210
211; -- start job file --
212[random-writers]
213rw=randwrite
214size=${SIZE}
215numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
216; -- end job file --
217
218This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
219
220; -- start job file --
221[random-writers]
222rw=randwrite
223size=64m
224numjobs=4
225; -- end job file --
226
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227fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
228inspiration.
229
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2304.2 Reserved keywords
231---------------------
232
233Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
234internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
235
236$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
237$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
238$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
239
240These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
241automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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242is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
243perform actions like:
244
245size=8*$mb_memory
246
247and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
248machine.
74929ac2 249
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250
2515.0 Detailed list of parameters
252-------------------------------
253
254This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
255Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
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256a string. Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression
257may be used, provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators
258are:
259
260 addition (+)
261 subtraction (-)
262 multiplication (*)
263 division (/)
264 modulus (%)
265 exponentiation (^)
266
267For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
268different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
269parentheses). The following types are used:
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270
271str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 272time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
e417fd66 273 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
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274 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
275 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
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276int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
277 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
278 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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279 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
280 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 281 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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282 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
283 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
284 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
285 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
286 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
287 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
288 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
289 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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290bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
291 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 292irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 293 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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294 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
295 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 296 int.
83349190 297float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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298
299With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
300parameters.
301
302name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
303 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 304 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 305 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 306 job.
71bfa161 307
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308wait_for=str Specifies the name of the already defined job to wait
309 for. Single waitee name only may be specified. If set, the job
310 won't be started until all workers of the waitee job are done.
311
312 Wait_for operates on the job name basis, so there are a few
313 limitations. First, the waitee must be defined prior to the
314 waiter job (meaning no forward references). Second, if a job
315 is being referenced as a waitee, it must have a unique name
316 (no duplicate waitees).
317
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318description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
319 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
320 not parsed.
321
3776041e 322directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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323 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
324 for escaping certain characters.
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325
326filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
327 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
328 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 329 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
414c2a3e 330 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
0fd666bf 331 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
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332 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
333 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
334 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
335 as the two working files, you would use
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336 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
337 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
338 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
339 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
340 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
341 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
342 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
343 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
344 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
345 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
346 direction set.
71bfa161 347
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348filename_format=str
349 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
350 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
351 fio will name a file based on the default file format
352 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
353 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
354 the following keywords in this string:
355
356 $jobname
357 The name of the worker thread or process.
358
359 $jobnum
360 The incremental number of the worker thread or
361 process.
362
363 $filenum
364 The incremental number of the file for that worker
365 thread or process.
366
367 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
368 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
369 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
370 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
371 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
372 no other format specifier is given.
373
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374opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
375 directory and down the file system tree.
376
3776041e 377lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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378 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
379 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
380 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
381 share files. The lock modes are:
382
383 none No locking. The default.
384 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
385 excluding all others.
386 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
387 readers may access the file at the
388 same time, but writes get exclusive
389 access.
390
d3aad8f2 391readwrite=str
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392rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
393
394 read Sequential reads
395 write Sequential writes
396 randwrite Random writes
397 randread Random reads
10b023db 398 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
71bfa161 399 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
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400 trimwrite Mixed trims and writes. Blocks will be
401 trimmed first, then written to.
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402
403 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
404 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 405 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
38dad62d 406 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
892ea9bd 407 done by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
38dad62d 408 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
059b0802 409 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
ddb754db 410 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
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411 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
412 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
413 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
414 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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415
416rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
417 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
418 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
419 values are:
420
421 sequential Generate sequential offset
422 identical Generate the same offset
423
424 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
425 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
426 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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427 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
428 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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429 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
430 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
431 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
432 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
433 offset.
71bfa161 434
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435kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
436 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
437 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
438 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
439
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440unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
441 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
442 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
443 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
444 instead.
445
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446randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
447 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
40fe5e7b 448 Defaults to true.
ee738499 449
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450randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
451 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
452 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
453 setting.
454
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455fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
456 Accepted values are:
457
458 none Do not pre-allocate space
459 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
460 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
461 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
462 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
463 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
464
465 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
466 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
467 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 468
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469fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
470 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
471 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
472 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
473 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
474 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
475
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476fadvise_stream=int Notify the kernel what write stream ID to place these
477 writes under. Only supported on Linux. Note, this option
478 may change going forward.
479
f7fa2653 480size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
7616cafe 481 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
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482 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance,
483 or increased/decreased by 'io_size'). Unless specific nrfiles
484 and filesize options are given, fio will divide this size
485 between the available files specified by the job. If not set,
486 fio will use the full size of the given files or devices.
487 If the files do not exist, size must be given. It is also
488 possible to give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If
489 size=20% is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the
490 given files or devices.
491
492io_size=int
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493io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
494 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
495 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
496 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
497 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
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498 'io_size' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
499 20G but exit when 5G have been done. The opposite is also
500 possible - if 'size' is set to 20G, and 'io_size' is set to
501 40G, then fio will do 40G of IO within the 0..20G region.
77731b29 502
f7fa2653 503filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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504 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
505 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
506 given, each created file is the same size.
507
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508file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
509 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
510 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
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511 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
512 is ignored on non-regular files.
bedc9dc2 513
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514fill_device=bool
515fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 516 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
de98bd30 517 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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518 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
519 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
520 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
521 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
522 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 523
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524blocksize=int
525bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
526 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
527 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
f90eff5a 528 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
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529 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
530 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
531 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
532 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
533 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
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534 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
535 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 536
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537blockalign=int
538ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
539 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
540 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
541 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
542 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
543 files, so it will turn off that option.
544
d3aad8f2 545blocksize_range=irange
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546bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
547 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
548 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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549 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
550 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
551 See bs=.
a00735e6 552
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553bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
554 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
555 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
556 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
557 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
558
559 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
560
561 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
562 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
563 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
564
565 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
566
567 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
568 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
569 option like this one:
570
571 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
572
573 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
574 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
575 up to more, it will error out.
576
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577 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
578 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
579 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
580 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
581 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
582 specify:
583
892ea9bd 584 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90:8k/10
720e84ad 585
d3aad8f2 586blocksize_unaligned
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587bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
588 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
589 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 590
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591bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
592 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
593 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
594 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
595
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596zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
597 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
598
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599refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
600 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
601 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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602 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
603 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 604
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605scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
606 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
607 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
608 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
609 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
610 blocks. Default: true.
611
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612buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
613 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
614 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
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615 random data and a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern is either
616 zeroes, or the pattern specified by buffer_pattern. If the
617 pattern option is used, it might skew the compression ratio
618 slightly. Note that this is per block size unit, for file/disk
619 wide compression level that matches this setting, you'll also
620 want to set refill_buffers.
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621
622buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
623 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
624 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
625 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
626 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
627 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
628 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
629 buffer.
630
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631buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
632 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
633 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
634 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
635 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
61b9861d
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636 be wrapped with "", e.g.:
637
638 buffer_pattern="abcd"
639 or
640 buffer_pattern=-12
641 or
642 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface
643
644 Also you can combine everything together in any order:
645 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface"abcd"-12
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646
647dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
648 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
649 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
650 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
651 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
652 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
653 distribution of unique buffers.
ce35b1ec 654
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655nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
656
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657openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
658 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
659 simultaneous opens.
660
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661file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
662 service next. The following types are defined:
663
664 random Just choose a file at random.
665
666 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
667 is the default.
668
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669 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
670 the next. Multiple files can still be
671 open depending on 'openfiles'.
672
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673 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
674 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
675 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
676 have been issued.
677
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678ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
679 types are defined:
680
681 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
682 used to position the io location.
683
a31041ea 684 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
685
e05af9e5 686 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 687
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688 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
689
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690 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
691 may only support queued behaviour with
692 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
de890a1e 693 This engine defines engine specific options.
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694
695 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
696
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697 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
698
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699 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
700
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701 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
702 to/from using memcpy(3).
703
704 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
705 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
706 space to the kernel.
707
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708 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
709 regular read/write async.
710
71bfa161 711 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 712 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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713 the target is an sg character device
714 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
715 io.
716
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717 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
718 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
719 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
720
ed92ac0c 721 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
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SL
722 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
723 port, listen and filename options are used to
724 specify what sort of connection to make, while
725 the protocol option determines which protocol
726 will be used.
727 This engine defines engine specific options.
ed92ac0c 728
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729 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
730 map data and send/receive.
de890a1e 731 This engine defines engine specific options.
9cce02e8 732
53aec0a4 733 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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734 cycles according to the cpuload= and
735 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
736 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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737 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
738 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
739 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
740 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 741
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742 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
743 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
744 to async IO. See
745
746 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
747
748 for more info on GUASI.
749
21b8aee8 750 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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751 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
752 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
753 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 754
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755 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
756 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
757 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
758 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
759 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
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DM
760
761 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
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762 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
763 request to DDIR_WRITE event
764
765 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
766 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
767 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
768 ioengine defines engine specific options.
769
770 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
771 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
772 options.
773
774 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
775 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
776 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
777 defines engine specific options.
0981fd71 778
b74e419e 779 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
a3f001f5 780 This engine interprets offsets a little
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781 differently. In HDFS, files once created
782 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
783 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
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FB
784 creates bunch of small files, and engine will
785 pick a file out of those files based on the
786 offset enerated by fio backend. Each jobs uses
787 it's own connection to HDFS.
1b10477b 788
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DE
789 mtd Read, write and erase an MTD character device
790 (e.g., /dev/mtd0). Discards are treated as
791 erases. Depending on the underlying device
792 type, the I/O may have to go in a certain
793 pattern, e.g., on NAND, writing sequentially
794 to erase blocks and discarding before
795 overwriting. The writetrim mode works well
796 for this constraint.
797
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798 external Prefix to specify loading an external
799 IO engine object file. Append the engine
800 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
801 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
802
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803iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
804 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
805 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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806 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
807 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 808 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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809 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
810 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
811 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
812 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
813 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 814
4950421a 815iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 816iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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JA
817 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
818 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
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819 bigger batches of IO at the time. If it is set to 0 the iodepth
820 value will be used.
cb5ab512 821
82407585 822iodepth_batch_complete_min=int
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JA
823iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
824 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
825 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
826 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
827 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
828 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
829 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
830 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
831
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RP
832iodepth_batch_complete_max=int This defines maximum pieces of IO to
833 retrieve at once. This variable should be used along with
834 iodepth_batch_complete_min=int variable, specifying the range
835 of min and max amount of IO which should be retrieved. By default
836 it is equal to iodepth_batch_complete_min value.
837
838 Example #1:
839
840 iodepth_batch_complete_min=1
841 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
842
843 which means that we will retrieve at leat 1 IO and up to the
844 whole submitted queue depth. If none of IO has been completed
845 yet, we will wait.
846
847 Example #2:
848
849 iodepth_batch_complete_min=0
850 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
851
852 which means that we can retrieve up to the whole submitted
853 queue depth, but if none of IO has been completed yet, we will
854 NOT wait and immediately exit the system call. In this example
855 we simply do polling.
856
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857iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
858 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
859 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
860 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
861 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
862 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
863
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864io_submit_mode=str This option controls how fio submits the IO to
865 the IO engine. The default is 'inline', which means that the
866 fio job threads submit and reap IO directly. If set to
867 'offload', the job threads will offload IO submission to a
868 dedicated pool of IO threads. This requires some coordination
869 and thus has a bit of extra overhead, especially for lower
870 queue depth IO where it can increase latencies. The benefit
871 is that fio can manage submission rates independently of
872 the device completion rates. This avoids skewed latency
873 reporting if IO gets back up on the device side (the
874 coordinated omission problem).
875
71bfa161 876direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 877 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
93bcfd20 878 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
76a43db4 879
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CM
880atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
881 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
882 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
883 now.
884
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885buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
886 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 887
f7fa2653 888offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
71bfa161
JA
889 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
890 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
891
214ac7e0 892offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
69bdd6ba
JH
893 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
894 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
895 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
896 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
897 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
898 even spacing between the starting points.
214ac7e0 899
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900number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
901 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
902 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
903 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
904 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
be3fec7d
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905 and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
906 of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this
907 condition is met before other end-of-job criteria.
ddf24e42 908
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909fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
910 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
911 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
912 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
913 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 914 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 915
e76b1da4 916fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 917 metadata blocks.
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JA
918 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back
919 to using fsync()
5f9099ea 920
e76b1da4
JA
921sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
922 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
923 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
924 can currently be one or more of:
925
926 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
927 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
928 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
929
930 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
931 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
932 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
933 This option is Linux specific.
934
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JA
935overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
936 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
937 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
938 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
939 will be done.
71bfa161 940
dbd11ead 941end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
71bfa161 942
ebb1415f
JA
943fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
944 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
945 file close, not just at the end of the job.
946
71bfa161
JA
947rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
948
949rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
950 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
951 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
c35dd7a6
JA
952 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
953 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
954 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 955
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JA
956random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
957 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
958 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
959 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
960 fio includes the following distribution models:
961
962 random Uniform random distribution
963 zipf Zipf distribution
964 pareto Pareto distribution
965
966 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
967 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
968 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
969 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
970 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
971 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
972 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
973 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map.
974
211c9b89
JA
975percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
976 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
977 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
978 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
979 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
d9472271
JA
980 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
981 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
982 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
211c9b89 983
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JA
984norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
985 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
986 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
987 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
83da8fbf
JE
988 some blocks may be read/written more than once. If this option
989 is used with verify= and multiple blocksizes (via bsrange=),
990 only intact blocks are verified, i.e., partially-overwritten
991 blocks are ignored.
bb8895e0 992
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JA
993softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
994 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
995 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
996 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
2b386d25
JA
997 disabled by default.
998
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JA
999random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
1000 IO offsets for random IO:
1001
1002 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
1003 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
c3546b53
JA
1004 tausworthe64 Strong 64-bit 2^258 cycle random number
1005 generator
e8b1961d
JA
1006
1007 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
1008 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
1009 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
1010 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
1011 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
1012 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
1013 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
1014 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
1015 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
1016 some blocks multiple times.
43f09da1 1017
71bfa161
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1018nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
1019
1020prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
1021 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
1022 See man ionice(1).
1023
1024prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
1025
1026thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
1027 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
48097d5c
JA
1028 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
1029 thinktime_spin.
1030
1031thinktime_spin=int
1032 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
1033 doing something with the data received, before falling back
1034 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
1035 thinktime.
9c1f7434 1036
4d01ece6 1037thinktime_blocks=int
9c1f7434
JA
1038 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
1039 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
1040 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
4d01ece6
JA
1041 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
1042 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
1043 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
1044 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
1045 if the latter is larger.
71bfa161 1046
581e7141 1047rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 1048 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
581e7141
JA
1049 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
1050 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1051 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
1052 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
1053 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
1054 limit reads.
71bfa161 1055
6d428bcd 1056rate_min=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 1057 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
581e7141
JA
1058 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
1059 read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
1060
1061rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
1062 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
1063 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
581e7141 1064 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
de8f6de9 1065 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
1066
1067rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141 1068 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
de8f6de9 1069 write separation.
71bfa161 1070
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JA
1071rate_process=str This option controls how fio manages rated IO
1072 submissions. The default is 'linear', which submits IO in a
1073 linear fashion with fixed delays between IOs that gets
1074 adjusted based on IO completion rates. If this is set to
1075 'poisson', fio will submit IO based on a more real world
1076 random request flow, known as the Poisson process
5d02b083
JA
1077 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process). The lambda
1078 will be 10^6 / IOPS for the given workload.
e7b24047 1079
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JA
1080latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
1081 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
1082 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
1083 See latency_window and latency_percentile
1084
1085latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
1086 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
1087 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
1088
1089latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
1090 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
1091 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1092 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1093
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JA
1094max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1095 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1096
6d428bcd 1097rate_cycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'rate_min' over this number
6c219763 1098 of milliseconds.
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JA
1099
1100cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
a08bc17f
JA
1101 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1102 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1103 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 1104 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
b0ea08ce
JA
1105 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1106 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1107 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1108 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 1109
d2e268b0
JA
1110cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1111 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
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1112 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1113 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1114 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 1115
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1116cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1117 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1118 supported:
1119
1120 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1121 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1122
1123 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
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1124 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1125 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1126 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
c2acfbac 1127
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YR
1128numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1129 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1130 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
67bf9823 1131 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
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YR
1132
1133numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1134 nodes. Format of the argements:
1135 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1136 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1137 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1138 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1139 needed to be specified.
1140 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1141 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1142 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1143
e417fd66 1144startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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1145 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1146 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1147 time.
1148
e417fd66 1149runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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1150 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1151 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1152 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1153
cf4464ca 1154time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 1155 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
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JA
1156 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1157 as many times as the runtime allows.
1158
e417fd66 1159ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
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1160 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1161 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
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1162 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1163 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1164 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1165 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 1166
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1167invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1168 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1169
1170sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1171 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1172
d3aad8f2 1173iomem=str
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1174mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1175 The allowed values are:
1176
1177 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1178
1179 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1180 through shmget(2).
1181
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1182 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1183
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1184 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1185 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1186 a filename is given after the option. The
1187 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 1188
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1189 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1190 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1191 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1192
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1193 mmapshared Same as mmap, but use a MMAP_SHARED
1194 mapping.
1195
71bfa161 1196 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
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1197 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1198 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1199 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1200 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 1201 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
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1202 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1203 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1204 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1205 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1206 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1207 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 1208 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
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1209
1210 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1211 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1212 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 1213
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JA
1214iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1215 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1216 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1217 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1218 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1219 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1220 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1221 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1222
f7fa2653 1223hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 1224 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 1225 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
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1226 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1227 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1228 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 1229
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1230exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1231 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1232 desired action.
1233
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1234exitall_on_error When one job finishes in error, terminate the rest. The
1235 default is to wait for each job to finish.
1236
71bfa161 1237bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
6c219763 1238 is specified in milliseconds.
71bfa161 1239
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JA
1240iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1241 is specified in milliseconds.
1242
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1243create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1244 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1245 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1246 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1247
1248create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1249 default.
1250
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1251create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1252 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1253
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1254create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1255 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1256 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1257 executed.
1258
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1259allow_file_create=bool If true, fio is permitted to create files as part
1260 of its workload. This is the default behavior. If this
1261 option is false, then fio will error out if the files it
1262 needs to use don't already exist. Default: true.
1263
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1264allow_mounted_write=bool If this isn't set, fio will abort jobs that
1265 are destructive (eg that write) to what appears to be a
1266 mounted device or partition. This should help catch creating
1267 inadvertently destructive tests, not realizing that the test
1268 will destroy data on the mounted file system. Default: false.
1269
afad68f7 1270pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
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1271 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1272 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
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1273 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1274 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1275 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1276 IO.
afad68f7 1277
e545a6ce 1278unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
bf9a3edb
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1279 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1280 set again and again.
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1281
1282loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1283 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1284 to 1.
1285
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1286verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1287 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1288 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1289 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1290 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1291 with the time_based option set.
1292
68e1f29a 1293do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
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SL
1294 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1295
71bfa161 1296verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
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RP
1297 after each iteration of the job. Each verification method also implies
1298 verification of special header, which is written to the beginning of
1299 each block. This header also includes meta information, like offset
1300 of the block, block number, timestamp when block was written, etc.
1301 verify=str can be combined with verify_pattern=str option.
1302 The allowed values are:
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1303
1304 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1305 it in the header of each block.
1306
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1307 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1308 area and store it in the header of each
1309 block.
1310
bac39e0e
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1311 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1312 it in the header of each block.
1313
3845591f 1314 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
0539d758
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1315 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1316 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1317 supported by the system.
3845591f 1318
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1319 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1320 it in the header of each block.
1321
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1322 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1323 it in the header of each block.
1324
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1325 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1326 it in the header of each block.
1327
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1328 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1329 the fastest software checksum that fio
1330 supports.
1331
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JA
1332 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1333
1334 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1335
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1336 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1337
b638d82f
RP
1338 meta This option is deprecated, since now meta information is
1339 included in generic verification header and meta verification
1340 happens by default. For detailed information see the description
1341 of the verify=str setting. This option is kept because of
1342 compatibility's sake with old configurations. Do not use it.
7437ee87 1343
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1344 pattern Verify a strict pattern. Normally fio includes
1345 a header with some basic information and
1346 checksumming, but if this option is set, only
1347 the specific pattern set with 'verify_pattern'
1348 is verified.
1349
36690c9b
JA
1350 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1351 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1352 else.
1353
6c219763 1354 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 1355 system to make sure that the written data is also
b892dc08
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1356 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1357 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1358 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1359 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1360 newly written data.
71bfa161 1361
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1362verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1363 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1364 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1365 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1366 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1367 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1368 significant.
3f9f4e26 1369
f7fa2653 1370verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
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SL
1371 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1372 verifying.
1373
f7fa2653 1374verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
1375 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1376 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1377 evenly.
90059d65 1378
0e92f873 1379verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
1380 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1381 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1382 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1383 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
1384 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1385 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
996093bb 1386 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
b638d82f 1387 with verify=str. Also, verify_pattern supports %o format,
61b9861d
RP
1388 which means that for each block offset will be written and
1389 then verifyied back, e.g.:
1390
1391 verify_pattern=%o
1392
1393 Or use combination of everything:
1394 verify_pattern=0xff%o"abcd"-12
e28218f3 1395
68e1f29a 1396verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
a12a3b4d
JA
1397 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1398 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1399 failure.
e8462bd8 1400
b463e936
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1401verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1402 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1403 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
ef71e317 1404 corruption occurred. Off by default.
b463e936 1405
e8462bd8
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1406verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1407 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1408 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1409 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
c85c324c
JA
1410 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1411 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1412 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1413 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
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1414
1415verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1416 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1417 format used.
6f87418f
JA
1418
1419verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1420 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1421 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1422 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1423 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1424 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1425 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1426 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
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1427 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1428
6f87418f
JA
1429verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1430 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1431 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
f42195a3
JA
1432 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1433 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1434 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1435 blocks will be verified more than once.
66c098b8 1436
ca09be4b
JA
1437verify_state_save=bool When a job exits during the write phase of a verify
1438 workload, save its current state. This allows fio to replay
1439 up until that point, if the verify state is loaded for the
1440 verify read phase. The format of the filename is, roughly,
1441 <type>-<jobname>-<jobindex>-verify.state. <type> is "local"
1442 for a local run, "sock" for a client/server socket connection,
1443 and "ip" (192.168.0.1, for instance) for a networked
1444 client/server connection.
1445
1446verify_state_load=bool If a verify termination trigger was used, fio stores
1447 the current write state of each thread. This can be used at
1448 verification time so that fio knows how far it should verify.
1449 Without this information, fio will run a full verification
1450 pass, according to the settings in the job file used.
1451
d392365e 1452stonewall
de8f6de9 1453wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1454 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1455 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1456 a new reporting group.
1457
abcab6af 1458new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
71bfa161
JA
1459
1460numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1461 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
abcab6af
AV
1462 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1463 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1464 conjunction with new_group.
1465
1466group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
04b2f799
JA
1467 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1468 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1469 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1470 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1471 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1472 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1473 using 'new_group'.
71bfa161
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1474
1475thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1476 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1477 instead.
1478
f7fa2653 1479zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1480
f7fa2653 1481zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1482 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1483 io on zones of a file.
1484
076efc7c 1485write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1486 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1487 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1488
076efc7c 1489read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1490 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1491 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1492 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1493 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1494 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1495 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1496 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
66c098b8 1497
64bbb865 1498replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
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1499 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1500 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1501 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1502 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1503 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1504 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1505
d1c46c04
DN
1506replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1507 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1508 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
de8f6de9 1509 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
d1c46c04
DN
1510 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1511 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1512 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1513 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1514 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1515 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1516 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1517 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1518 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1519 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1520 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1521 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1522
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JA
1523replay_align=int Force alignment of IO offsets and lengths in a trace
1524 to this power of 2 value.
1525
1526replay_scale=int Scale sector offsets down by this factor when
1527 replaying traces.
1528
3a5db920
JA
1529per_job_logs=bool If set, this generates bw/clat/iops log with per
1530 file private filenames. If not set, jobs with identical names
1531 will share the log filename. Default: true.
1532
e3cedca7 1533write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1534 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1535 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1536 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
ddb754db 1537 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
8ad3b3dd
JA
1538 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1539 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
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JA
1540 jobs). If 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not
1541 include the job index.
71bfa161 1542
e3cedca7 1543write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
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JA
1544 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1545 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1546 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1547 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
e3cedca7
JA
1548
1549 write_lat_log=foo
1550
8ad3b3dd
JA
1551 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1552 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1553 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
3a5db920
JA
1554 fine the logs automatically. If 'per_job_logs' is false, then
1555 the filename will not include the job index.
1556
71bfa161 1557
b8bc8cba
JA
1558write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1559 given with this option, the default filename of
8ad3b3dd
JA
1560 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1561 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
3a5db920
JA
1562 is given, fio will still append the type of log. If
1563 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not include
1564 the job index.
b8bc8cba
JA
1565
1566log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1567 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1568 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1569 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1570 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1571 Defaults to 0.
1572
ae588852
JA
1573log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1574 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1575
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JA
1576log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1577 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1578 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1579 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1580 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1581 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1582 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1583 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1584 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1585 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1586 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1587 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1588 availability of zlib.
1589
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JA
1590log_compression_cpus=str Define the set of CPUs that are allowed to
1591 handle online log compression for the IO jobs. This can
1592 provide better isolation between performance sensitive jobs,
1593 and background compression work.
1594
1595log_store_compressed=bool If set, fio will store the log files in a
1596 compressed format. They can be decompressed with fio, using
1597 the --inflate-log command line parameter. The files will be
1598 stored with a .fz suffix.
b26317c9 1599
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DE
1600block_error_percentiles=bool If set, record errors in trim block-sized
1601 units from writes and trims and output a histogram of
1602 how many trims it took to get to errors, and what kind
1603 of error was encountered.
1604
f7fa2653 1605lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
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JA
1606 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1607 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
81c6b6cd 1608 The amount specified is per worker.
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1609
1610exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1611 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1612 jobname.prerun.txt.
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1613
1614exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1615 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1616 jobname.postrun.txt.
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1617
1618ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1619 io scheduler before running.
1620
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JA
1621disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1622 supports it. Defaults to on.
1623
02af0988 1624disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
9520ebb9
JA
1625 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1626 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1627 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1628 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1629 disable_bw as well.
1630
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JA
1631disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1632 disable_lat.
1633
9520ebb9 1634disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1635 disable_slat.
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JA
1636
1637disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1638 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1639
83349190
YH
1640clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1641 completion latencies.
1642
1643percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
66347cfa
DE
1644 for completion latencies and the block error histogram.
1645 Each number is a floating number in the range (0,100],
1646 and the maximum length of the list is 20. Use ':'
1647 to separate the numbers, and list the numbers in ascending
1648 order. For example, --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause
1649 fio to report the values of completion latency below which
1650 99.5% and 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
83349190 1651
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JA
1652clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1653 supported options are:
1654
1655 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1656
1657 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1658
1659 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1660
1661 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1662 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1663 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1664 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1665 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1666 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1667
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JA
1668gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1669 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1670 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1671 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1672 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1673 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1674
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JA
1675gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1676 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1677 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1678 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1679 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1680 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1681 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1682 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1683 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1684 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1685 jobs.
a696fa2a 1686
06842027 1687continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
f2bba182
RR
1688 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1689 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1690 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1691 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1692 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1693 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1694 run.
be4ecfdf 1695
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SL
1696 The allowed values are:
1697
1698 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1699
1700 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1701
1702 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1703
1704 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1705
1706 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1707
1708 all Continue on all errors.
1709
1710 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1711
1712 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1713
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DM
1714ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1715 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1716 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1717 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1718 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1719 Example:
1720 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
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BC
1721 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1722 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
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1723
1724error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1725 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
66c098b8 1726
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JA
1727cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1728 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1729 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1730 mounted, you can do so with:
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JA
1731
1732 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1733
a696fa2a
JA
1734cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1735 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1736 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1737
7de87099
VG
1738cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1739 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1740 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1741 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1742 files after job completion. Default: false
1743
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1744uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1745 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1746
1747gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1748
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DE
1749flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1750 global flow. See flow.
1751
1752flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1753 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1754 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1755 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1756 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1757 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1758 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1759 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1760
1761flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1762 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1763 lower value of the counter.
1764
1765flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1766 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1767
de890a1e
SL
1768In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1769ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1770caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1771that defines them is selected.
1772
1773[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1774 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1775 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1776 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1777 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1778 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1779
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1780[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1781
1782[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1783 microseconds.
1784
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JA
1785[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1786
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SL
1787[netsplice] hostname=str
1788[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1789 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
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SB
1790 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1791 address.
a3f001f5 1792[libhdfs] namenode=str The host name or IP address of a HDFS cluster namenode to contact.
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SL
1793
1794[netsplice] port=int
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JA
1795[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to. If this is used
1796with numjobs to spawn multiple instances of the same job type, then this will
1797be the starting port number since fio will use a range of ports.
a3f001f5 1798[libhdfs] port=int the listening port of the HFDS cluster namenode.
de890a1e 1799
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SB
1800[netsplice] interface=str
1801[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1802 receive UDP multicast
1803
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SB
1804[netsplice] ttl=int
1805[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1806 Default: 1
1807
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JA
1808[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1809[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1810
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SL
1811[netsplice] protocol=str
1812[netsplice] proto=str
1813[net] protocol=str
1814[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1815
1816 tcp Transmission control protocol
49ccb8c1 1817 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
f5cc3d0e 1818 udp User datagram protocol
49ccb8c1 1819 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
de890a1e
SL
1820 unix UNIX domain socket
1821
1822 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1823 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1824 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1825 used and the port is invalid.
1826
1827[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1828 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1829 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
1008602c 1830
b511c9aa 1831[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
7aeb1e94
JA
1832 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1833 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1834 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1835 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1836 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1837 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1838 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
b511c9aa
SB
1839 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1840 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1841 address.
7aeb1e94 1842
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JA
1843[net] window_size Set the desired socket buffer size for the connection.
1844
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1845[net] mss Set the TCP maximum segment size (TCP_MAXSEG).
1846
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DM
1847[e4defrag] donorname=str
1848 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1849[e4defrag] inplace=int
66c098b8 1850 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
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DM
1851 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1852 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1853 and free right after event
1854
65fa28ca 1855[mtd] skip_bad=bool Skip operations against known bad blocks.
de890a1e 1856
a3f001f5
FB
1857[libhdfs] hdfsdirectory libhdfs will create chunk in this HDFS directory
1858[libhdfs] chunck_size the size of the chunck to use for each file.
1859
de890a1e 1860
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18616.0 Interpreting the output
1862---------------------------
1863
1864fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1865status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1866
73c8b082 1867Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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1868
1869The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1870each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1871
1872Idle Run
1873---- ---
1874P Thread setup, but not started.
1875C Thread created.
9c6f6316 1876I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
b0f65863 1877 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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1878 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1879 r Running, doing random reads.
1880 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1881 w Running, doing random writes.
1882 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1883 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1884 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
3d434057 1885 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
fc6bd43c 1886 V Running, doing verification of written data.
71bfa161 1887E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
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1888_ Thread reaped, or
1889X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
a5e371a6 1890K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
71bfa161 1891
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JA
1892Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1893command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1894writers running, the output would look like this:
1895
1896Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1897
1898Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
18991..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1900
71bfa161 1901The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
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JA
1902currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1903listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1904and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
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JA
1905the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1906so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1907first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
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1908
1909When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1910each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1911direction, the output looks like:
1912
1913Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1914 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
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JA
1915 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1916 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1917 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1918 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1919 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
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1920 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1921 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1922 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
JA
1923 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1924 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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1925
1926The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1927thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1928they denote:
1929
1930io= Number of megabytes io performed
1931bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 1932iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 1933runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 1934 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
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JA
1935 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1936 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 1937 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 1938 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 1939 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
0d237712
LAG
1940 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1941 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
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1942 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1943 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1944 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1945 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1946 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1947 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1948 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1949 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1950 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1951 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1952cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
e7823a94
JA
1953 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1954 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1955 and minor page faults.
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JA
1956IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1957 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1958 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1959 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1960 range from 16 to 31.
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1961IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1962 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1963 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1964 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1965IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
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JA
1966IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1967 of them were short.
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JA
1968IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1969 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1970 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1971 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
8abdce66
JA
1972 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1973 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
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1974
1975After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1976will look like this:
1977
1978Run status group 0 (all jobs):
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JA
1979 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1980 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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1981
1982For each data direction, it prints:
1983
1984io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1985aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1986minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1987maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1988mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1989maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1990
1991And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1992
1993Disk stats (read/write):
1994 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
1995
1996Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
1997numbers denote:
1998
1999ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
2000merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
2001ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
2002io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
2003util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
2004 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
2005
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2006It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
2007running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
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JA
2008You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
2009parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
2010sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
8423bd11 2011
71bfa161
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2012
20137.0 Terse output
2014----------------
2015
2016For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 2017of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
71bfa161
JA
2018The format is one long line of values, such as:
2019
562c2d2f
DN
20202;card0;0;0;7139336;121836;60004;1;10109;27.932460;116.933948;220;126861;3495.446807;1085.368601;226;126864;3523.635629;1089.012448;24063;99944;50.275485%;59818.274627;5540.657370;7155060;122104;60004;1;8338;29.086342;117.839068;388;128077;5032.488518;1234.785715;391;128085;5061.839412;1236.909129;23436;100928;50.287926%;59964.832030;5644.844189;14.595833%;19.394167%;123706;0;7313;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;100.0%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.01%;0.02%;0.05%;0.16%;6.04%;40.40%;52.68%;0.64%;0.01%;0.00%;0.01%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%
2021A description of this job goes here.
2022
2023The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 2024
525c2bfa
JA
2025To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
2026value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
2027be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
2028signify that change.
6820cb3b 2029
71bfa161
JA
2030Split up, the format is as follows:
2031
5e726d0a 2032 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 2033 READ status:
312b4af2 2034 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2035 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2036 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
1db92cb6 2037 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2038 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2039 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
71bfa161 2040 WRITE status:
312b4af2 2041 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2042 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2043 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev(usec)
1db92cb6 2044 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2045 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2046 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
046ee302 2047 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 2048 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
562c2d2f
DN
2049 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
2050 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
f2f788dd
JA
2051 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
2052 Read merges, write merges,
2053 Read ticks, write ticks,
3d7cd9b4 2054 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
de8f6de9 2055 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
66c098b8 2056
de8f6de9 2057 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7 2058
1db92cb6
JA
2059Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
2060for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
2061
2062 1.00%=6112
2063
2064which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
2065
f2f788dd
JA
2066For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
2067there will be a disk utilization section.
2068
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2069
20708.0 Trace file format
2071---------------------
66c098b8 2072There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
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2073is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
2074below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
2075
2076In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
2077
2078
20798.1 Trace file format v1
2080------------------------
2081Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
2082
2083rw, offset, length
2084
2085where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
2086
2087This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
2088
2089
20908.2 Trace file format v2
2091------------------------
2092The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
2093It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
2094possible file actions.
2095
2096The first line of the trace file has to be:
2097
2098fio version 2 iolog
2099
2100Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
2101
2102The file management format:
2103
2104filename action
2105
2106The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
2107
2108add Add the given filename to the trace
66c098b8 2109open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
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2110 been added with the add action before.
2111close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
2112 opened before.
2113
2114
2115The file io action format:
2116
2117filename action offset length
2118
2119The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
66c098b8 2120before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
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2121bytes. The action can be one of these:
2122
2123wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
5c7808fe 2124 The time is relative to the previous wait statement.
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2125read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2126write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2127sync fsync() the file
2128datasync fdatasync() the file
2129trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
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2130
2131
21329.0 CPU idleness profiling
06464907 2133--------------------------
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2134In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
2135we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
2136fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
2137idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
2138By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
2139CPU can be derived accordingly.
2140
2141An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
2142and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
2143work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
2144overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.
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2145
2146
214710.0 Verification and triggers
2148------------------------------
2149Fio is usually run in one of two ways, when data verification is done. The
2150first is a normal write job of some sort with verify enabled. When the
2151write phase has completed, fio switches to reads and verifies everything
2152it wrote. The second model is running just the write phase, and then later
2153on running the same job (but with reads instead of writes) to repeat the
2154same IO patterns and verify the contents. Both of these methods depend
2155on the write phase being completed, as fio otherwise has no idea how much
2156data was written.
2157
2158With verification triggers, fio supports dumping the current write state
2159to local files. Then a subsequent read verify workload can load this state
2160and know exactly where to stop. This is useful for testing cases where
2161power is cut to a server in a managed fashion, for instance.
2162
2163A verification trigger consists of two things:
2164
21651) Storing the write state of each job
21662) Executing a trigger command
2167
2168The write state is relatively small, on the order of hundreds of bytes
2169to single kilobytes. It contains information on the number of completions
2170done, the last X completions, etc.
2171
2172A trigger is invoked either through creation ('touch') of a specified
2173file in the system, or through a timeout setting. If fio is run with
2174--trigger-file=/tmp/trigger-file, then it will continually check for
2175the existence of /tmp/trigger-file. When it sees this file, it will
2176fire off the trigger (thus saving state, and executing the trigger
2177command).
2178
2179For client/server runs, there's both a local and remote trigger. If
2180fio is running as a server backend, it will send the job states back
2181to the client for safe storage, then execute the remote trigger, if
2182specified. If a local trigger is specified, the server will still send
2183back the write state, but the client will then execute the trigger.
2184
218510.1 Verification trigger example
2186---------------------------------
2187Lets say we want to run a powercut test on the remote machine 'server'.
2188Our write workload is in write-test.fio. We want to cut power to 'server'
2189at some point during the run, and we'll run this test from the safety
2190or our local machine, 'localbox'. On the server, we'll start the fio
2191backend normally:
2192
2193server# fio --server
2194
2195and on the client, we'll fire off the workload:
2196
2197localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger-remote="bash -c \"echo b > /proc/sysrq-triger\""
2198
2199We set /tmp/my-trigger as the trigger file, and we tell fio to execute
2200
2201echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
2202
2203on the server once it has received the trigger and sent us the write
2204state. This will work, but it's not _really_ cutting power to the server,
2205it's merely abruptly rebooting it. If we have a remote way of cutting
2206power to the server through IPMI or similar, we could do that through
2207a local trigger command instead. Lets assume we have a script that does
2208IPMI reboot of a given hostname, ipmi-reboot. On localbox, we could
2209then have run fio with a local trigger instead:
2210
2211localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger="ipmi-reboot server"
2212
2213For this case, fio would wait for the server to send us the write state,
2214then execute 'ipmi-reboot server' when that happened.
2215
221610.1 Loading verify state
2217-------------------------
2218To load store write state, read verification job file must contain
2219the verify_state_load option. If that is set, fio will load the previously
2220stored state. For a local fio run this is done by loading the files directly,
2221and on a client/server run, the server backend will ask the client to send
2222the files over and load them from there.