Update documentation for random_distribution=gauss
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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
29dbd1e5 1310. Verification and triggers
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14
151.0 Overview and history
16------------------------
17fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
18case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
19performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
20such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
21Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
22without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
23
24A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
25of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
26way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
27memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
28reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
29simulate both of these cases, and many more.
30
312.0 How fio works
32-----------------
33The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
34writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
35any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
36is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
37sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
38and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
39bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
40
41 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
42 We may only be reading sequentially from this
43 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
44 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
45
46 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
47 a single value, or it may describe a range of
48 block sizes.
49
50 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
51
52 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
53 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 54 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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55 SG (SCSI generic sg).
56
6c219763 57 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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58 depth do we want to maintain?
59
60 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
61
62 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
63
64 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
65 this workload over.
66c098b8 66
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67The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
68there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
69job behaves.
70
71
723.0 Running fio
73---------------
74See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
75of them.
76
77Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
78(or job files) as parameters:
79
80$ fio job_file
81
82and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
83more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
84of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
550b1db6 85parameter described in the parameter section.
71bfa161 86
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87If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
88parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
89to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
90(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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91mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
92also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
93--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
94Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
95until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
96similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
97job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 98
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99fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
100in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 101such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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102
103
1044.0 Job file format
105-------------------
106As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
107what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
108where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
109to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
110A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
111may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
112several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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113section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
114'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 115
3c54bc46 116So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 117randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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118
119; -- start job file --
120[global]
121rw=randread
122size=128m
123
124[job1]
125
126[job2]
127
128; -- end job file --
129
130As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
131described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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132makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
133line, this job would look as follows:
134
135$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
136
71bfa161 137
3c54bc46 138Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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139to files.
140
141; -- start job file --
142[random-writers]
143ioengine=libaio
144iodepth=4
145rw=randwrite
146bs=32k
147direct=0
148size=64m
149numjobs=4
150
151; -- end job file --
152
153Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
154We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 155increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 156fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 157to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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158have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
159specify:
160
161$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 162
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163When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
164desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
165Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
166.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
167
168; -- start job file including.fio --
169[global]
170filename=/tmp/test
171filesize=1m
172include glob-include.fio
173
174[test]
175rw=randread
176bs=4k
177time_based=1
178runtime=10
179include test-include.fio
180; -- end job file including.fio --
181
182; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
183thread=1
184group_reporting=1
185; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
186
187; -- start job file test-include.fio --
188ioengine=libaio
189iodepth=4
190; -- end job file test-include.fio --
191
192Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
193section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
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194contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
195sections.
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196
197
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1984.1 Environment variables
199-------------------------
200
3c54bc46 201fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
4fbe1860 202sub-string of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
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203words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
204environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
205is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
206substituted.
207
208As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
209
210$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
211
212; -- start job file --
213[random-writers]
214rw=randwrite
215size=${SIZE}
216numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
217; -- end job file --
218
219This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
220
221; -- start job file --
222[random-writers]
223rw=randwrite
224size=64m
225numjobs=4
226; -- end job file --
227
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228fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
229inspiration.
230
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2314.2 Reserved keywords
232---------------------
233
234Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
235internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
236
237$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
238$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
239$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
240
241These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
242automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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243is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
244perform actions like:
245
246size=8*$mb_memory
247
248and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
249machine.
74929ac2 250
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251
2525.0 Detailed list of parameters
253-------------------------------
254
255This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
256Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
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257a string. Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression
258may be used, provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators
259are:
260
261 addition (+)
262 subtraction (-)
263 multiplication (*)
264 division (/)
265 modulus (%)
266 exponentiation (^)
267
268For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
269different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
270parentheses). The following types are used:
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271
272str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 273time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
e417fd66 274 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
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275 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
276 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
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277int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
278 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
279 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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280 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
281 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 282 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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283 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
284 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
285 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
286 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
287 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
288 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
289 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
290 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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291bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
292 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 293irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 294 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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295 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
296 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 297 int.
83349190 298float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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299
300With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
301parameters.
302
303name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
304 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 305 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 306 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 307 job.
71bfa161 308
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309wait_for=str Specifies the name of the already defined job to wait
310 for. Single waitee name only may be specified. If set, the job
311 won't be started until all workers of the waitee job are done.
312
313 Wait_for operates on the job name basis, so there are a few
314 limitations. First, the waitee must be defined prior to the
315 waiter job (meaning no forward references). Second, if a job
316 is being referenced as a waitee, it must have a unique name
317 (no duplicate waitees).
318
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319description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
320 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
321 not parsed.
322
3776041e 323directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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324 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
325 for escaping certain characters.
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326
327filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
328 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
329 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 330 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
414c2a3e 331 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
0fd666bf 332 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
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333 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
334 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
335 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
336 as the two working files, you would use
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337 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
338 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
339 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
340 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
341 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
342 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
343 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
344 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
345 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
346 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
347 direction set.
71bfa161 348
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349filename_format=str
350 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
351 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
352 fio will name a file based on the default file format
353 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
354 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
355 the following keywords in this string:
356
357 $jobname
358 The name of the worker thread or process.
359
360 $jobnum
361 The incremental number of the worker thread or
362 process.
363
364 $filenum
365 The incremental number of the file for that worker
366 thread or process.
367
368 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
369 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
370 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
371 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
372 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
373 no other format specifier is given.
374
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375opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
376 directory and down the file system tree.
377
3776041e 378lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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379 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
380 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
381 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
382 share files. The lock modes are:
383
384 none No locking. The default.
385 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
386 excluding all others.
387 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
388 readers may access the file at the
389 same time, but writes get exclusive
390 access.
391
d3aad8f2 392readwrite=str
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393rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
394
395 read Sequential reads
396 write Sequential writes
397 randwrite Random writes
398 randread Random reads
10b023db 399 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
71bfa161 400 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
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401 trimwrite Mixed trims and writes. Blocks will be
402 trimmed first, then written to.
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403
404 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
405 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 406 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
38dad62d 407 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
892ea9bd 408 done by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
38dad62d 409 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
059b0802 410 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
ddb754db 411 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
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412 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
413 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
414 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
415 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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416
417rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
418 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
419 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
420 values are:
421
422 sequential Generate sequential offset
423 identical Generate the same offset
424
425 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
426 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
427 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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428 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
429 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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430 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
431 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
432 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
433 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
434 offset.
71bfa161 435
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436kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
437 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
438 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
439 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
440
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441unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
442 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
443 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
444 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
445 instead.
446
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447randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
448 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
40fe5e7b 449 Defaults to true.
ee738499 450
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451randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
452 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
453 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
454 setting.
455
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456fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
457 Accepted values are:
458
459 none Do not pre-allocate space
460 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
461 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
462 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
463 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
464 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
465
466 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
467 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
468 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 469
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470fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
471 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
472 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
473 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
474 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
475 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
476
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477fadvise_stream=int Notify the kernel what write stream ID to place these
478 writes under. Only supported on Linux. Note, this option
479 may change going forward.
480
f7fa2653 481size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
7616cafe 482 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
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483 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance,
484 or increased/decreased by 'io_size'). Unless specific nrfiles
485 and filesize options are given, fio will divide this size
486 between the available files specified by the job. If not set,
487 fio will use the full size of the given files or devices.
488 If the files do not exist, size must be given. It is also
489 possible to give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If
490 size=20% is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the
491 given files or devices.
492
493io_size=int
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494io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
495 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
496 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
497 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
498 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
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499 'io_size' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
500 20G but exit when 5G have been done. The opposite is also
501 possible - if 'size' is set to 20G, and 'io_size' is set to
502 40G, then fio will do 40G of IO within the 0..20G region.
77731b29 503
f7fa2653 504filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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505 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
506 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
507 given, each created file is the same size.
508
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509file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
510 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
511 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
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512 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
513 is ignored on non-regular files.
bedc9dc2 514
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515fill_device=bool
516fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 517 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
de98bd30 518 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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519 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
520 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
521 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
522 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
523 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 524
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525blocksize=int
526bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
527 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
528 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
f90eff5a 529 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
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530 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
531 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
532 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
533 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
534 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
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535 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
536 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 537
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538blockalign=int
539ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
540 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
541 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
542 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
543 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
544 files, so it will turn off that option.
545
d3aad8f2 546blocksize_range=irange
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547bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
548 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
549 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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550 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
551 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
552 See bs=.
a00735e6 553
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554bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
555 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
556 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
557 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
558 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
559
560 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
561
562 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
563 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
564 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
565
566 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
567
568 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
569 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
570 option like this one:
571
572 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
573
574 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
575 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
576 up to more, it will error out.
577
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578 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
579 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
580 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
581 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
582 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
583 specify:
584
892ea9bd 585 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90:8k/10
720e84ad 586
d3aad8f2 587blocksize_unaligned
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588bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
589 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
590 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 591
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592bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
593 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
594 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
595 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
596
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597zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
598 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
599
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600refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
601 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
602 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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603 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
604 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 605
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606scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
607 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
608 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
609 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
610 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
611 blocks. Default: true.
612
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613buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
614 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
615 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
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616 random data and a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern is either
617 zeroes, or the pattern specified by buffer_pattern. If the
618 pattern option is used, it might skew the compression ratio
619 slightly. Note that this is per block size unit, for file/disk
620 wide compression level that matches this setting, you'll also
621 want to set refill_buffers.
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622
623buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
624 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
625 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
626 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
627 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
628 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
629 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
630 buffer.
631
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632buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
633 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
634 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
635 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
636 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
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637 be wrapped with "", e.g.:
638
639 buffer_pattern="abcd"
640 or
641 buffer_pattern=-12
642 or
643 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface
644
645 Also you can combine everything together in any order:
646 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface"abcd"-12
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647
648dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
649 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
650 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
651 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
652 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
653 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
654 distribution of unique buffers.
ce35b1ec 655
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656nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
657
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658openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
659 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
660 simultaneous opens.
661
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662file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
663 service next. The following types are defined:
664
665 random Just choose a file at random.
666
667 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
668 is the default.
669
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670 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
671 the next. Multiple files can still be
672 open depending on 'openfiles'.
673
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674 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
675 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
676 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
677 have been issued.
678
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679ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
680 types are defined:
681
682 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
683 used to position the io location.
684
a31041ea 685 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
686
e05af9e5 687 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 688
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689 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
690
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691 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
692 may only support queued behaviour with
693 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
de890a1e 694 This engine defines engine specific options.
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695
696 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
697
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698 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
699
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700 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
701
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702 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
703 to/from using memcpy(3).
704
705 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
706 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
707 space to the kernel.
708
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709 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
710 regular read/write async.
711
71bfa161 712 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 713 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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714 the target is an sg character device
715 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
716 io.
717
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718 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
719 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
720 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
721
ed92ac0c 722 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
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SL
723 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
724 port, listen and filename options are used to
725 specify what sort of connection to make, while
726 the protocol option determines which protocol
727 will be used.
728 This engine defines engine specific options.
ed92ac0c 729
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730 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
731 map data and send/receive.
de890a1e 732 This engine defines engine specific options.
9cce02e8 733
53aec0a4 734 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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735 cycles according to the cpuload= and
736 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
737 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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738 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
739 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
740 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
741 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 742
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743 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
744 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
745 to async IO. See
746
747 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
748
749 for more info on GUASI.
750
21b8aee8 751 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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752 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
753 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
754 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 755
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756 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
757 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
758 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
759 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
760 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
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761
762 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
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763 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
764 request to DDIR_WRITE event
765
766 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
767 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
768 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
769 ioengine defines engine specific options.
770
771 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
772 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
773 options.
774
775 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
776 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
777 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
778 defines engine specific options.
0981fd71 779
b74e419e 780 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
a3f001f5 781 This engine interprets offsets a little
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782 differently. In HDFS, files once created
783 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
784 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
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FB
785 creates bunch of small files, and engine will
786 pick a file out of those files based on the
787 offset enerated by fio backend. Each jobs uses
788 it's own connection to HDFS.
1b10477b 789
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DE
790 mtd Read, write and erase an MTD character device
791 (e.g., /dev/mtd0). Discards are treated as
792 erases. Depending on the underlying device
793 type, the I/O may have to go in a certain
794 pattern, e.g., on NAND, writing sequentially
795 to erase blocks and discarding before
796 overwriting. The writetrim mode works well
797 for this constraint.
798
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799 external Prefix to specify loading an external
800 IO engine object file. Append the engine
801 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
802 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
803
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804iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
805 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
806 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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807 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
808 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 809 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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810 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
811 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
812 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
813 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
814 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 815
4950421a 816iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 817iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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818 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
819 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
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820 bigger batches of IO at the time. If it is set to 0 the iodepth
821 value will be used.
cb5ab512 822
82407585 823iodepth_batch_complete_min=int
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824iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
825 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
826 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
827 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
828 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
829 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
830 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
831 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
832
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RP
833iodepth_batch_complete_max=int This defines maximum pieces of IO to
834 retrieve at once. This variable should be used along with
835 iodepth_batch_complete_min=int variable, specifying the range
836 of min and max amount of IO which should be retrieved. By default
837 it is equal to iodepth_batch_complete_min value.
838
839 Example #1:
840
841 iodepth_batch_complete_min=1
842 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
843
844 which means that we will retrieve at leat 1 IO and up to the
845 whole submitted queue depth. If none of IO has been completed
846 yet, we will wait.
847
848 Example #2:
849
850 iodepth_batch_complete_min=0
851 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
852
853 which means that we can retrieve up to the whole submitted
854 queue depth, but if none of IO has been completed yet, we will
855 NOT wait and immediately exit the system call. In this example
856 we simply do polling.
857
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858iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
859 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
860 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
861 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
862 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
863 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
864
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865io_submit_mode=str This option controls how fio submits the IO to
866 the IO engine. The default is 'inline', which means that the
867 fio job threads submit and reap IO directly. If set to
868 'offload', the job threads will offload IO submission to a
869 dedicated pool of IO threads. This requires some coordination
870 and thus has a bit of extra overhead, especially for lower
871 queue depth IO where it can increase latencies. The benefit
872 is that fio can manage submission rates independently of
873 the device completion rates. This avoids skewed latency
874 reporting if IO gets back up on the device side (the
875 coordinated omission problem).
876
71bfa161 877direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 878 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
93bcfd20 879 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
76a43db4 880
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CM
881atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
882 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
883 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
884 now.
885
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886buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
887 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 888
f7fa2653 889offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
71bfa161
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890 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
891 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
892
214ac7e0 893offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
69bdd6ba
JH
894 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
895 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
896 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
897 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
898 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
899 even spacing between the starting points.
214ac7e0 900
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901number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
902 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
903 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
904 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
905 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
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906 and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
907 of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this
908 condition is met before other end-of-job criteria.
ddf24e42 909
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910fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
911 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
912 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
913 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
914 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 915 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 916
e76b1da4 917fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 918 metadata blocks.
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JA
919 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back
920 to using fsync()
5f9099ea 921
e76b1da4
JA
922sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
923 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
924 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
925 can currently be one or more of:
926
927 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
928 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
929 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
930
931 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
932 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
933 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
934 This option is Linux specific.
935
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JA
936overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
937 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
938 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
939 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
940 will be done.
71bfa161 941
dbd11ead 942end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
71bfa161 943
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JA
944fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
945 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
946 file close, not just at the end of the job.
947
71bfa161
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948rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
949
950rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
951 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
952 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
c35dd7a6
JA
953 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
954 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
955 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 956
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957random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
958 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
959 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
960 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
961 fio includes the following distribution models:
962
963 random Uniform random distribution
964 zipf Zipf distribution
965 pareto Pareto distribution
8116fd24 966 gauss Normal (guassian) distribution
92d42d69
JA
967
968 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
969 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
970 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
971 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
972 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
973 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
974 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
8116fd24
JA
975 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map. For
976 the gauss distribution, a normal deviation is supplied as
977 a value between 0 and 100.
92d42d69 978
211c9b89
JA
979percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
980 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
981 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
982 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
983 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
d9472271
JA
984 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
985 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
986 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
211c9b89 987
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988norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
989 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
990 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
991 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
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992 some blocks may be read/written more than once. If this option
993 is used with verify= and multiple blocksizes (via bsrange=),
994 only intact blocks are verified, i.e., partially-overwritten
995 blocks are ignored.
bb8895e0 996
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997softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
998 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
999 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
1000 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
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JA
1001 disabled by default.
1002
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JA
1003random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
1004 IO offsets for random IO:
1005
1006 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
1007 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
c3546b53
JA
1008 tausworthe64 Strong 64-bit 2^258 cycle random number
1009 generator
e8b1961d
JA
1010
1011 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
1012 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
1013 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
1014 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
1015 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
1016 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
1017 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
1018 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
1019 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
3bb85e84
JA
1020 some blocks multiple times. The default value is tausworthe,
1021 unless the required space exceeds 2^32 blocks. If it does,
1022 then tausworthe64 is selected automatically.
43f09da1 1023
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1024nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
1025
1026prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
1027 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
1028 See man ionice(1).
1029
1030prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
1031
1032thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
1033 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
48097d5c
JA
1034 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
1035 thinktime_spin.
1036
1037thinktime_spin=int
1038 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
1039 doing something with the data received, before falling back
1040 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
1041 thinktime.
9c1f7434 1042
4d01ece6 1043thinktime_blocks=int
9c1f7434
JA
1044 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
1045 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
1046 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
4d01ece6
JA
1047 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
1048 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
1049 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
1050 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
1051 if the latter is larger.
71bfa161 1052
581e7141 1053rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 1054 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
581e7141
JA
1055 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
1056 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1057 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
1058 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
1059 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
1060 limit reads.
71bfa161 1061
6d428bcd 1062rate_min=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 1063 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
581e7141
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1064 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
1065 read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
1066
1067rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
1068 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
1069 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
581e7141 1070 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
de8f6de9 1071 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
1072
1073rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141 1074 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
de8f6de9 1075 write separation.
71bfa161 1076
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JA
1077rate_process=str This option controls how fio manages rated IO
1078 submissions. The default is 'linear', which submits IO in a
1079 linear fashion with fixed delays between IOs that gets
1080 adjusted based on IO completion rates. If this is set to
1081 'poisson', fio will submit IO based on a more real world
1082 random request flow, known as the Poisson process
5d02b083
JA
1083 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process). The lambda
1084 will be 10^6 / IOPS for the given workload.
e7b24047 1085
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JA
1086latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
1087 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
1088 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
1089 See latency_window and latency_percentile
1090
1091latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
1092 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
1093 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
1094
1095latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
1096 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
1097 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1098 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1099
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1100max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1101 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1102
6d428bcd 1103rate_cycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'rate_min' over this number
6c219763 1104 of milliseconds.
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1105
1106cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
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JA
1107 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1108 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1109 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 1110 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
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1111 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1112 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1113 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1114 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 1115
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1116cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1117 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
62a7273d
JA
1118 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1119 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1120 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 1121
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JA
1122cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1123 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1124 supported:
1125
1126 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1127 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1128
1129 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
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1130 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1131 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1132 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
c2acfbac 1133
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YR
1134numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1135 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1136 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
67bf9823 1137 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
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YR
1138
1139numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1140 nodes. Format of the argements:
1141 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1142 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1143 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1144 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1145 needed to be specified.
1146 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1147 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1148 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1149
e417fd66 1150startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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1151 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1152 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1153 time.
1154
e417fd66 1155runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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1156 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1157 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1158 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1159
cf4464ca 1160time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 1161 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
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JA
1162 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1163 as many times as the runtime allows.
1164
e417fd66 1165ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
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1166 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1167 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
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1168 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1169 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1170 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1171 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 1172
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1173invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1174 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1175
1176sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1177 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1178
d3aad8f2 1179iomem=str
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1180mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1181 The allowed values are:
1182
1183 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1184
1185 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1186 through shmget(2).
1187
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1188 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1189
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1190 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1191 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1192 a filename is given after the option. The
1193 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 1194
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1195 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1196 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1197 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1198
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1199 mmapshared Same as mmap, but use a MMAP_SHARED
1200 mapping.
1201
71bfa161 1202 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
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JA
1203 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1204 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1205 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1206 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 1207 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
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1208 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1209 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1210 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1211 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1212 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1213 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 1214 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
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JA
1215
1216 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1217 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1218 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 1219
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1220iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1221 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1222 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1223 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1224 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1225 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1226 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1227 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1228
f7fa2653 1229hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 1230 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 1231 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
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1232 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1233 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1234 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 1235
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1236exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1237 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1238 desired action.
1239
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1240exitall_on_error When one job finishes in error, terminate the rest. The
1241 default is to wait for each job to finish.
1242
71bfa161 1243bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
6c219763 1244 is specified in milliseconds.
71bfa161 1245
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JA
1246iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1247 is specified in milliseconds.
1248
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1249create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1250 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1251 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1252 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1253
1254create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1255 default.
1256
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1257create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1258 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1259
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1260create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1261 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1262 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1263 executed.
1264
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1265allow_file_create=bool If true, fio is permitted to create files as part
1266 of its workload. This is the default behavior. If this
1267 option is false, then fio will error out if the files it
1268 needs to use don't already exist. Default: true.
1269
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1270allow_mounted_write=bool If this isn't set, fio will abort jobs that
1271 are destructive (eg that write) to what appears to be a
1272 mounted device or partition. This should help catch creating
1273 inadvertently destructive tests, not realizing that the test
1274 will destroy data on the mounted file system. Default: false.
1275
afad68f7 1276pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
34f1c044
JA
1277 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1278 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
9c0d2241
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1279 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1280 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1281 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1282 IO.
afad68f7 1283
e545a6ce 1284unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
bf9a3edb
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1285 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1286 set again and again.
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1287
1288loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1289 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1290 to 1.
1291
62167762
JC
1292verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1293 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1294 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1295 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1296 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1297 with the time_based option set.
1298
68e1f29a 1299do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
e84c73a8
SL
1300 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1301
71bfa161 1302verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
b638d82f
RP
1303 after each iteration of the job. Each verification method also implies
1304 verification of special header, which is written to the beginning of
1305 each block. This header also includes meta information, like offset
1306 of the block, block number, timestamp when block was written, etc.
1307 verify=str can be combined with verify_pattern=str option.
1308 The allowed values are:
71bfa161
JA
1309
1310 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1311 it in the header of each block.
1312
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1313 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1314 area and store it in the header of each
1315 block.
1316
bac39e0e
JA
1317 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1318 it in the header of each block.
1319
3845591f 1320 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
0539d758
JA
1321 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1322 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1323 supported by the system.
3845591f 1324
71bfa161
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1325 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1326 it in the header of each block.
1327
969f7ed3
JA
1328 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1329 it in the header of each block.
1330
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JA
1331 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1332 it in the header of each block.
1333
844ea602
JA
1334 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1335 the fastest software checksum that fio
1336 supports.
1337
cd14cc10
JA
1338 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1339
1340 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1341
7c353ceb
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1342 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1343
b638d82f
RP
1344 meta This option is deprecated, since now meta information is
1345 included in generic verification header and meta verification
1346 happens by default. For detailed information see the description
1347 of the verify=str setting. This option is kept because of
1348 compatibility's sake with old configurations. Do not use it.
7437ee87 1349
59245381
JA
1350 pattern Verify a strict pattern. Normally fio includes
1351 a header with some basic information and
1352 checksumming, but if this option is set, only
1353 the specific pattern set with 'verify_pattern'
1354 is verified.
1355
36690c9b
JA
1356 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1357 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1358 else.
1359
6c219763 1360 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 1361 system to make sure that the written data is also
b892dc08
JA
1362 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1363 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1364 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1365 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1366 newly written data.
71bfa161 1367
160b966d
JA
1368verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1369 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1370 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1371 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1372 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1373 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1374 significant.
3f9f4e26 1375
f7fa2653 1376verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
546a9142
SL
1377 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1378 verifying.
1379
f7fa2653 1380verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
1381 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1382 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1383 evenly.
90059d65 1384
0e92f873 1385verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
1386 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1387 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1388 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1389 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
1390 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1391 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
996093bb 1392 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
b638d82f 1393 with verify=str. Also, verify_pattern supports %o format,
61b9861d
RP
1394 which means that for each block offset will be written and
1395 then verifyied back, e.g.:
1396
1397 verify_pattern=%o
1398
1399 Or use combination of everything:
1400 verify_pattern=0xff%o"abcd"-12
e28218f3 1401
68e1f29a 1402verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
a12a3b4d
JA
1403 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1404 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1405 failure.
e8462bd8 1406
b463e936
JA
1407verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1408 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1409 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
ef71e317 1410 corruption occurred. Off by default.
b463e936 1411
e8462bd8
JA
1412verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1413 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1414 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1415 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
c85c324c
JA
1416 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1417 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1418 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1419 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
JA
1420
1421verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1422 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1423 format used.
6f87418f
JA
1424
1425verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1426 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1427 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1428 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1429 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1430 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1431 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1432 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
JA
1433 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1434
6f87418f
JA
1435verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1436 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1437 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
f42195a3
JA
1438 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1439 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1440 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1441 blocks will be verified more than once.
66c098b8 1442
ca09be4b
JA
1443verify_state_save=bool When a job exits during the write phase of a verify
1444 workload, save its current state. This allows fio to replay
1445 up until that point, if the verify state is loaded for the
1446 verify read phase. The format of the filename is, roughly,
1447 <type>-<jobname>-<jobindex>-verify.state. <type> is "local"
1448 for a local run, "sock" for a client/server socket connection,
1449 and "ip" (192.168.0.1, for instance) for a networked
1450 client/server connection.
1451
1452verify_state_load=bool If a verify termination trigger was used, fio stores
1453 the current write state of each thread. This can be used at
1454 verification time so that fio knows how far it should verify.
1455 Without this information, fio will run a full verification
1456 pass, according to the settings in the job file used.
1457
d392365e 1458stonewall
de8f6de9 1459wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1460 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1461 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1462 a new reporting group.
1463
abcab6af 1464new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
71bfa161
JA
1465
1466numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1467 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
abcab6af
AV
1468 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1469 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1470 conjunction with new_group.
1471
1472group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
04b2f799
JA
1473 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1474 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1475 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1476 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1477 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1478 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1479 using 'new_group'.
71bfa161
JA
1480
1481thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1482 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1483 instead.
1484
f7fa2653 1485zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1486
f7fa2653 1487zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1488 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1489 io on zones of a file.
1490
076efc7c 1491write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1492 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1493 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1494
076efc7c 1495read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1496 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1497 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1498 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1499 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1500 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1501 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1502 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
66c098b8 1503
64bbb865 1504replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
62776229
JA
1505 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1506 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1507 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1508 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1509 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1510 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1511
d1c46c04
DN
1512replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1513 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1514 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
de8f6de9 1515 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
d1c46c04
DN
1516 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1517 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1518 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1519 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1520 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1521 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1522 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1523 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1524 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1525 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1526 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1527 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1528
0c63576e
JA
1529replay_align=int Force alignment of IO offsets and lengths in a trace
1530 to this power of 2 value.
1531
1532replay_scale=int Scale sector offsets down by this factor when
1533 replaying traces.
1534
3a5db920
JA
1535per_job_logs=bool If set, this generates bw/clat/iops log with per
1536 file private filenames. If not set, jobs with identical names
1537 will share the log filename. Default: true.
1538
e3cedca7 1539write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1540 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1541 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1542 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
ddb754db 1543 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
8ad3b3dd
JA
1544 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1545 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
3a5db920
JA
1546 jobs). If 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not
1547 include the job index.
71bfa161 1548
e3cedca7 1549write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
02af0988
JA
1550 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1551 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1552 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1553 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
e3cedca7
JA
1554
1555 write_lat_log=foo
1556
8ad3b3dd
JA
1557 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1558 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1559 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
3a5db920
JA
1560 fine the logs automatically. If 'per_job_logs' is false, then
1561 the filename will not include the job index.
1562
71bfa161 1563
b8bc8cba
JA
1564write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1565 given with this option, the default filename of
8ad3b3dd
JA
1566 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1567 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
3a5db920
JA
1568 is given, fio will still append the type of log. If
1569 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not include
1570 the job index.
b8bc8cba
JA
1571
1572log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1573 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1574 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1575 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1576 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
e6989e10 1577 See log_max as well. Defaults to 0, logging all entries.
b8bc8cba 1578
e6989e10
JA
1579log_max=bool If log_avg_msec is set, fio logs the average over that window.
1580 If you instead want to log the maximum value, set this option
1581 to 1. Defaults to 0, meaning that averaged values are logged.
1582.
ae588852
JA
1583log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1584 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1585
aee2ab67
JA
1586log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1587 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1588 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1589 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1590 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1591 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1592 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1593 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1594 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1595 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1596 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1597 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1598 availability of zlib.
1599
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1600log_compression_cpus=str Define the set of CPUs that are allowed to
1601 handle online log compression for the IO jobs. This can
1602 provide better isolation between performance sensitive jobs,
1603 and background compression work.
1604
1605log_store_compressed=bool If set, fio will store the log files in a
1606 compressed format. They can be decompressed with fio, using
1607 the --inflate-log command line parameter. The files will be
1608 stored with a .fz suffix.
b26317c9 1609
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DE
1610block_error_percentiles=bool If set, record errors in trim block-sized
1611 units from writes and trims and output a histogram of
1612 how many trims it took to get to errors, and what kind
1613 of error was encountered.
1614
f7fa2653 1615lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
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JA
1616 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1617 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
81c6b6cd 1618 The amount specified is per worker.
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1619
1620exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1621 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1622 jobname.prerun.txt.
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1623
1624exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1625 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1626 jobname.postrun.txt.
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1627
1628ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1629 io scheduler before running.
1630
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JA
1631disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1632 supports it. Defaults to on.
1633
02af0988 1634disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
9520ebb9
JA
1635 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1636 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1637 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1638 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1639 disable_bw as well.
1640
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JA
1641disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1642 disable_lat.
1643
9520ebb9 1644disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1645 disable_slat.
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JA
1646
1647disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1648 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1649
83349190
YH
1650clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1651 completion latencies.
1652
1653percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
66347cfa
DE
1654 for completion latencies and the block error histogram.
1655 Each number is a floating number in the range (0,100],
1656 and the maximum length of the list is 20. Use ':'
1657 to separate the numbers, and list the numbers in ascending
1658 order. For example, --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause
1659 fio to report the values of completion latency below which
1660 99.5% and 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
83349190 1661
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JA
1662clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1663 supported options are:
1664
1665 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1666
1667 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1668
1669 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1670
1671 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1672 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1673 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1674 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1675 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1676 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1677
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JA
1678gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1679 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1680 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1681 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1682 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1683 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1684
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JA
1685gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1686 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1687 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1688 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1689 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1690 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1691 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1692 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1693 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1694 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1695 jobs.
a696fa2a 1696
06842027 1697continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
f2bba182
RR
1698 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1699 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1700 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1701 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1702 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1703 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1704 run.
be4ecfdf 1705
06842027
SL
1706 The allowed values are:
1707
1708 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1709
1710 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1711
1712 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1713
1714 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1715
1716 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1717
1718 all Continue on all errors.
1719
1720 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1721
1722 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1723
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DM
1724ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1725 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1726 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1727 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1728 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1729 Example:
1730 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
66c098b8
BC
1731 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1732 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
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DM
1733
1734error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1735 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
66c098b8 1736
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JA
1737cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1738 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1739 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1740 mounted, you can do so with:
a696fa2a
JA
1741
1742 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1743
a696fa2a
JA
1744cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1745 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1746 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1747
7de87099
VG
1748cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1749 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1750 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1751 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1752 files after job completion. Default: false
1753
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JA
1754uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1755 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1756
1757gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1758
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DE
1759flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1760 global flow. See flow.
1761
1762flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1763 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1764 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1765 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1766 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1767 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1768 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1769 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1770
1771flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1772 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1773 lower value of the counter.
1774
1775flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1776 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1777
de890a1e
SL
1778In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1779ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1780caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1781that defines them is selected.
1782
1783[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1784 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1785 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1786 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1787 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1788 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1789
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JA
1790[psyncv2] hipri Set RWF_HIPRI on IO, indicating to the kernel that
1791 it's of higher priority than normal.
1792
0353050f
JA
1793[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1794
1795[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1796 microseconds.
1797
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JA
1798[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1799
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SL
1800[netsplice] hostname=str
1801[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1802 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
b511c9aa
SB
1803 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1804 address.
a3f001f5 1805[libhdfs] namenode=str The host name or IP address of a HDFS cluster namenode to contact.
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SL
1806
1807[netsplice] port=int
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JA
1808[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to. If this is used
1809with numjobs to spawn multiple instances of the same job type, then this will
1810be the starting port number since fio will use a range of ports.
a3f001f5 1811[libhdfs] port=int the listening port of the HFDS cluster namenode.
de890a1e 1812
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SB
1813[netsplice] interface=str
1814[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1815 receive UDP multicast
1816
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SB
1817[netsplice] ttl=int
1818[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1819 Default: 1
1820
1d360ffb
JA
1821[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1822[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1823
de890a1e
SL
1824[netsplice] protocol=str
1825[netsplice] proto=str
1826[net] protocol=str
1827[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1828
1829 tcp Transmission control protocol
49ccb8c1 1830 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
f5cc3d0e 1831 udp User datagram protocol
49ccb8c1 1832 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
de890a1e
SL
1833 unix UNIX domain socket
1834
1835 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1836 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1837 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1838 used and the port is invalid.
1839
1840[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1841 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1842 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
1008602c 1843
b511c9aa 1844[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
7aeb1e94
JA
1845 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1846 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1847 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1848 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1849 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1850 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1851 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
b511c9aa
SB
1852 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1853 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1854 address.
7aeb1e94 1855
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JA
1856[net] window_size Set the desired socket buffer size for the connection.
1857
e5f34d95
JA
1858[net] mss Set the TCP maximum segment size (TCP_MAXSEG).
1859
d54fce84
DM
1860[e4defrag] donorname=str
1861 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1862[e4defrag] inplace=int
66c098b8 1863 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
d54fce84
DM
1864 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1865 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1866 and free right after event
1867
65fa28ca 1868[mtd] skip_bad=bool Skip operations against known bad blocks.
de890a1e 1869
a3f001f5
FB
1870[libhdfs] hdfsdirectory libhdfs will create chunk in this HDFS directory
1871[libhdfs] chunck_size the size of the chunck to use for each file.
1872
de890a1e 1873
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18746.0 Interpreting the output
1875---------------------------
1876
1877fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1878status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1879
73c8b082 1880Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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1881
1882The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1883each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1884
1885Idle Run
1886---- ---
1887P Thread setup, but not started.
1888C Thread created.
9c6f6316 1889I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
b0f65863 1890 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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1891 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1892 r Running, doing random reads.
1893 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1894 w Running, doing random writes.
1895 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1896 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1897 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
3d434057 1898 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
fc6bd43c 1899 V Running, doing verification of written data.
71bfa161 1900E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
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JA
1901_ Thread reaped, or
1902X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
a5e371a6 1903K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
71bfa161 1904
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JA
1905Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1906command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1907writers running, the output would look like this:
1908
1909Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1910
1911Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
19121..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1913
71bfa161 1914The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
c9f60304
JA
1915currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1916listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1917and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
4f7e57a4
JA
1918the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1919so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1920first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
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1921
1922When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1923each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1924direction, the output looks like:
1925
1926Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1927 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
6104ddb6
JA
1928 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1929 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1930 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1931 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1932 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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JA
1933 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1934 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1935 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
JA
1936 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1937 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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1938
1939The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1940thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1941they denote:
1942
1943io= Number of megabytes io performed
1944bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 1945iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 1946runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 1947 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
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JA
1948 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1949 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 1950 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 1951 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 1952 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
0d237712
LAG
1953 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1954 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
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JA
1955 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1956 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1957 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1958 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1959 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1960 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1961 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1962 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1963 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1964 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1965cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
e7823a94
JA
1966 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1967 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1968 and minor page faults.
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JA
1969IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1970 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1971 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1972 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1973 range from 16 to 31.
838bc709
JA
1974IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1975 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1976 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1977 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1978IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
30061b97
JA
1979IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1980 of them were short.
ec118304
JA
1981IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1982 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1983 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1984 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
8abdce66
JA
1985 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1986 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
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JA
1987
1988After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1989will look like this:
1990
1991Run status group 0 (all jobs):
b22989b9
JA
1992 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1993 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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JA
1994
1995For each data direction, it prints:
1996
1997io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1998aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1999minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2000maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2001mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
2002maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
2003
2004And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
2005
2006Disk stats (read/write):
2007 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
2008
2009Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
2010numbers denote:
2011
2012ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
2013merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
2014ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
2015io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
2016util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
2017 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
2018
8423bd11
JA
2019It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
2020running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
06464907
JA
2021You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
2022parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
2023sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
8423bd11 2024
71bfa161
JA
2025
20267.0 Terse output
2027----------------
2028
2029For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 2030of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
71bfa161
JA
2031The format is one long line of values, such as:
2032
562c2d2f
DN
20332;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%
2034A description of this job goes here.
2035
2036The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 2037
525c2bfa
JA
2038To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
2039value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
2040be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
2041signify that change.
6820cb3b 2042
71bfa161
JA
2043Split up, the format is as follows:
2044
5e726d0a 2045 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 2046 READ status:
312b4af2 2047 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2048 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2049 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
1db92cb6 2050 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2051 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2052 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
71bfa161 2053 WRITE status:
312b4af2 2054 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2055 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2056 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev(usec)
1db92cb6 2057 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2058 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2059 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
046ee302 2060 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 2061 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
562c2d2f
DN
2062 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
2063 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
f2f788dd
JA
2064 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
2065 Read merges, write merges,
2066 Read ticks, write ticks,
3d7cd9b4 2067 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
de8f6de9 2068 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
66c098b8 2069
de8f6de9 2070 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7 2071
1db92cb6
JA
2072Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
2073for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
2074
2075 1.00%=6112
2076
2077which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
2078
f2f788dd
JA
2079For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
2080there will be a disk utilization section.
2081
25c8b9d7
PD
2082
20838.0 Trace file format
2084---------------------
66c098b8 2085There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
25c8b9d7
PD
2086is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
2087below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
2088
2089In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
2090
2091
20928.1 Trace file format v1
2093------------------------
2094Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
2095
2096rw, offset, length
2097
2098where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
2099
2100This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
2101
2102
21038.2 Trace file format v2
2104------------------------
2105The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
2106It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
2107possible file actions.
2108
2109The first line of the trace file has to be:
2110
2111fio version 2 iolog
2112
2113Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
2114
2115The file management format:
2116
2117filename action
2118
2119The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
2120
2121add Add the given filename to the trace
66c098b8 2122open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
25c8b9d7
PD
2123 been added with the add action before.
2124close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
2125 opened before.
2126
2127
2128The file io action format:
2129
2130filename action offset length
2131
2132The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
66c098b8 2133before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
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PD
2134bytes. The action can be one of these:
2135
2136wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
5c7808fe 2137 The time is relative to the previous wait statement.
25c8b9d7
PD
2138read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2139write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2140sync fsync() the file
2141datasync fdatasync() the file
2142trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
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HL
2143
2144
21459.0 CPU idleness profiling
06464907 2146--------------------------
f2a2ce0e
HL
2147In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
2148we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
2149fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
2150idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
2151By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
2152CPU can be derived accordingly.
2153
2154An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
2155and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
2156work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
2157overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.
99b9a85a
JA
2158
2159
216010.0 Verification and triggers
2161------------------------------
2162Fio is usually run in one of two ways, when data verification is done. The
2163first is a normal write job of some sort with verify enabled. When the
2164write phase has completed, fio switches to reads and verifies everything
2165it wrote. The second model is running just the write phase, and then later
2166on running the same job (but with reads instead of writes) to repeat the
2167same IO patterns and verify the contents. Both of these methods depend
2168on the write phase being completed, as fio otherwise has no idea how much
2169data was written.
2170
2171With verification triggers, fio supports dumping the current write state
2172to local files. Then a subsequent read verify workload can load this state
2173and know exactly where to stop. This is useful for testing cases where
2174power is cut to a server in a managed fashion, for instance.
2175
2176A verification trigger consists of two things:
2177
21781) Storing the write state of each job
21792) Executing a trigger command
2180
2181The write state is relatively small, on the order of hundreds of bytes
2182to single kilobytes. It contains information on the number of completions
2183done, the last X completions, etc.
2184
2185A trigger is invoked either through creation ('touch') of a specified
2186file in the system, or through a timeout setting. If fio is run with
2187--trigger-file=/tmp/trigger-file, then it will continually check for
2188the existence of /tmp/trigger-file. When it sees this file, it will
2189fire off the trigger (thus saving state, and executing the trigger
2190command).
2191
2192For client/server runs, there's both a local and remote trigger. If
2193fio is running as a server backend, it will send the job states back
2194to the client for safe storage, then execute the remote trigger, if
2195specified. If a local trigger is specified, the server will still send
2196back the write state, but the client will then execute the trigger.
2197
219810.1 Verification trigger example
2199---------------------------------
2200Lets say we want to run a powercut test on the remote machine 'server'.
2201Our write workload is in write-test.fio. We want to cut power to 'server'
2202at some point during the run, and we'll run this test from the safety
2203or our local machine, 'localbox'. On the server, we'll start the fio
2204backend normally:
2205
2206server# fio --server
2207
2208and on the client, we'll fire off the workload:
2209
2210localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger-remote="bash -c \"echo b > /proc/sysrq-triger\""
2211
2212We set /tmp/my-trigger as the trigger file, and we tell fio to execute
2213
2214echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
2215
2216on the server once it has received the trigger and sent us the write
2217state. This will work, but it's not _really_ cutting power to the server,
2218it's merely abruptly rebooting it. If we have a remote way of cutting
2219power to the server through IPMI or similar, we could do that through
2220a local trigger command instead. Lets assume we have a script that does
2221IPMI reboot of a given hostname, ipmi-reboot. On localbox, we could
2222then have run fio with a local trigger instead:
2223
2224localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger="ipmi-reboot server"
2225
2226For this case, fio would wait for the server to send us the write state,
2227then execute 'ipmi-reboot server' when that happened.
2228
29dbd1e5 222910.2 Loading verify state
99b9a85a
JA
2230-------------------------
2231To load store write state, read verification job file must contain
2232the verify_state_load option. If that is set, fio will load the previously
2233stored state. For a local fio run this is done by loading the files directly,
2234and on a client/server run, the server backend will ask the client to send
2235the files over and load them from there.