io_u_mark_depth: just set index, don't fall through
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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
11
12
131.0 Overview and history
14------------------------
15fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
16case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
17performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
18such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
19Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
20without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
21
22A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
23of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
24way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
25memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
26reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
27simulate both of these cases, and many more.
28
292.0 How fio works
30-----------------
31The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
32writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
33any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
34is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
35sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
36and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
37bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
38
39 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
40 We may only be reading sequentially from this
41 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
42 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
43
44 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
45 a single value, or it may describe a range of
46 block sizes.
47
48 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
49
50 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
51 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
52 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
53 SG (SCSI generic sg).
54
55 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
56 depth do we want to maintain?
57
58 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
59
60 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
61
62 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
63 this workload over.
64
65The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
66there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
67job behaves.
68
69
703.0 Running fio
71---------------
72See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
73of them.
74
75Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
76(or job files) as parameters:
77
78$ fio job_file
79
80and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
81more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
82of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
83parameter described the the parameter section.
84
85If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
86parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
87to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
88(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
89mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
90also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
91--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
92Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
93until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
94similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
95job until a new [] job entry is seen.
96
97fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
98in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
99such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
100
101
1024.0 Job file format
103-------------------
104As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
105what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
106where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
107to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
108A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
109may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
110several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
111section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
112'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
113
114So lets look at a really simple job file that define to threads, each
115randomly reading from a 128MiB file.
116
117; -- start job file --
118[global]
119rw=randread
120size=128m
121
122[job1]
123
124[job2]
125
126; -- end job file --
127
128As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
129described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
130makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
131line, this job would look as follows:
132
133$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
134
135
136Lets look at an example that have a number of processes writing randomly
137to files.
138
139; -- start job file --
140[random-writers]
141ioengine=libaio
142iodepth=4
143rw=randwrite
144bs=32k
145direct=0
146size=64m
147numjobs=4
148
149; -- end job file --
150
151Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
152We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
153increased the buffer size used to 32KiB and define numjobs to 4 to
154fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
155to their own 64MiB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
156have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
157specify:
158
159$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
160
161fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
162inspiration.
163
164
1655.0 Detailed list of parameters
166-------------------------------
167
168This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
169Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
170a string. The following types are used:
171
172str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
173int Integer. A whole number value, can be negative.
174siint SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a postfix
175 describing the base of the number. Accepted postfixes are k/m/g,
176 meaning kilo, mega, and giga. So if you want to specify 4096,
177 you could either write out '4096' or just give 4k. The postfixes
178 signify base 2 values, so 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on.
179 If the option accepts an upper and lower range, use a colon ':'
180 or minus '-' to seperate such values. See irange.
181bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
182 true and false (1 and 0).
183irange Integer range with postfix. Allows value range to be given, such
184 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the seperator, eg
185 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
186 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
187 siint.
188
189With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
190parameters.
191
192name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
193 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
194 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
195 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
196 job.
197
198description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
199 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
200 not parsed.
201
202directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to places files
203 in a different location than "./".
204
205filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
206 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
207 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
208 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
209 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host and
210 port to connect to in the format of =host/port. If the
211 ioengine is file based, you can specify a number of files
212 by seperating the names with a ':' colon. So if you wanted
213 a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb as the two working files,
214 you would use filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. '-' is a reserved
215 name, meaning stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends
216 on the read/write direction set.
217
218opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
219 directory and down the file system tree.
220
221readwrite=str
222rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
223
224 read Sequential reads
225 write Sequential writes
226 randwrite Random writes
227 randread Random reads
228 rw Sequential mixed reads and writes
229 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
230
231 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
232 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
233 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
234 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset - this
235 is only useful for random IO, where fio would normally
236 generate a new random offset for every IO. If you append
237 eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
238 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
239 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
240 that.
241
242randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
243 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
244
245fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
246 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
247 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
248 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
249 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
250 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
251
252size=siint The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
253 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
254 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
255 Unless specific nr_files and filesize options are given,
256 fio will divide this size between the available files
257 specified by the job.
258
259filesize=siint Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
260 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
261 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
262 given, each created file is the same size.
263
264blocksize=siint
265bs=siint The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
266 can be given for both read and writes. If a single siint is
267 given, it will apply to both. If a second siint is specified
268 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
269 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write.
270 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, and 8k blocks
271 for writes. If you only wish to set the write size, you
272 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
273 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
274
275blocksize_range=irange
276bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
277 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
278 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
279 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
280 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
281 See bs=.
282
283blocksize_unaligned
284bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
285 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
286 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
287
288zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
289 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
290
291nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
292
293openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
294 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
295 simultaneous opens.
296
297file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
298 service next. The following types are defined:
299
300 random Just choose a file at random.
301
302 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
303 is the default.
304
305 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
306 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
307 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
308 have been issued.
309
310ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
311 types are defined:
312
313 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
314 used to position the io location.
315
316 libaio Linux native asynchronous io.
317
318 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
319
320 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
321 to/from using memcpy(3).
322
323 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
324 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
325 space to the kernel.
326
327 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
328 regular read/write async.
329
330 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
331 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
332 the target is an sg character device
333 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
334 io.
335
336 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
337 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
338 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
339
340 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
341 'filename' must be set appropriately to
342 filename=host/port regardless of send
343 or receive, if the latter only the port
344 argument is used.
345
346 cpu Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
347 cycles according to the cpuload= and
348 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
349 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
350 85% of the CPU.
351
352 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
353 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
354 to async IO. See
355
356 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
357
358 for more info on GUASI.
359
360 external Prefix to specify loading an external
361 IO engine object file. Append the engine
362 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
363 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
364
365iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
366 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
367 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
368 concurrency.
369
370iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
371 It defaults to the same as iodepth, but can be set lower
372 if one so desires.
373
374iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
375 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
376 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
377 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
378 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
379 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
380
381direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
382 O_DIRECT.
383
384buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
385 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
386
387offset=siint Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
388 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
389 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
390
391fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
392 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
393 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
394 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
395 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
396 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
397
398overwrite=bool If writing to a file, setup the file first and do overwrites.
399
400end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when the job exits.
401
402fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
403 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
404 file close, not just at the end of the job.
405
406rwmixcycle=int Value in milliseconds describing how often to switch between
407 reads and writes for a mixed workload. The default is
408 500 msecs.
409
410rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
411
412rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
413 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
414 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
415 the first.
416
417norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
418 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
419 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
420 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
421 some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
422 is mutually exclusive with verify= for that reason, since
423 fio doesn't track potential block rewrites which may alter
424 the calculated checksum for that block.
425
426nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
427
428prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
429 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
430 See man ionice(1).
431
432prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
433
434thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
435 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
436 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
437 thinktime_spin.
438
439thinktime_spin=int
440 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
441 doing something with the data received, before falling back
442 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
443 thinktime.
444
445thinktime_blocks
446 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
447 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
448 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
449 after every block.
450
451rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job to this number of KiB/sec.
452
453ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
454 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
455 the job to exit.
456
457rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
458 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
459 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
460 the smallest block size is used as the metric.
461
462rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
463 the job to exit.
464
465ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
466 of milliseconds.
467
468cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
469 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
470 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
471 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
472 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
473 operating systems or kernel versions.
474
475cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
476 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
477 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5.
478
479startdelay=int Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
480 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
481 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
482 time.
483
484runtime=int Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
485 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
486 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
487 cap the total runtime to a given time.
488
489time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
490 specified even if the file(s) are completey read or
491 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
492 as many times as the runtime allows.
493
494invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
495 to starting io. Defaults to true.
496
497sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
498 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
499
500iomem=str
501mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
502 The allowed values are:
503
504 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
505
506 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
507 through shmget(2).
508
509 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
510
511 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
512 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
513 a filename is given after the option. The
514 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
515
516 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
517 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
518 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
519
520 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
521 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
522 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
523 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
524 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
525 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MiB in size. So
526 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
527 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
528 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
529 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
530 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
531 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
532 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
533
534 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
535 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
536 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
537
538hugepage-size=siint
539 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
540 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MiB.
541 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
542 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
543 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
544
545exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
546 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
547 desired action.
548
549bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
550 is specified in milliseconds.
551
552create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
553 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
554 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
555 used and even the number of processors in the system.
556
557create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
558 default.
559
560unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
561 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the fileset
562 again and again.
563
564loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
565 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
566 to 1.
567
568verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
569 after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
570
571 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
572 it in the header of each block.
573
574 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
575 it in the header of each block.
576
577 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
578 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
579 else.
580
581 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
582 system to make sure that the written data is also
583 correctly read back.
584
585verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
586 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
587 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
588 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
589 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
590 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
591 significant.
592
593stonewall Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before
594 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
595 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
596 a new reporting group.
597
598new_group Start a new reporting group. If this option isn't given,
599 jobs in a file will be part of the same reporting group
600 unless seperated by a stone wall (or if it's a group
601 by itself, with the numjobs option).
602
603numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
604 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
605 the same thing. We regard that grouping of jobs as a
606 specific group.
607
608group_reporting If 'numjobs' is set, it may be interesting to display
609 statistics for the group as a whole instead of for each
610 individual job. This is especially true of 'numjobs' is
611 large, looking at individual thread/process output quickly
612 becomes unwieldy. If 'group_reporting' is specified, fio
613 will show the final report per-group instead of per-job.
614
615thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
616 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
617 instead.
618
619zonesize=siint Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
620
621zoneskip=siint Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
622 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
623 io on zones of a file.
624
625write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
626 read_iolog.
627
628read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
629 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
630 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
631 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
632 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
633 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
634 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
635 file first (blktrace <device> -d file_for_fio.bin).
636
637write_bw_log If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
638 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
639 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
640 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
641 graphs.
642
643write_lat_log Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
644 completion latencies instead.
645
646lockmem=siint Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
647 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
648 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
649
650exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
651 through system(3).
652
653exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
654 though system(3).
655
656ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
657 io scheduler before running.
658
659cpuload=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, attempt to use the specified
660 percentage of CPU cycles.
661
662cpuchunks=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, split the load into
663 cycles of the given time. In milliseconds.
664
665disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
666 supports it. Defaults to on.
667
668
6696.0 Interpreting the output
670---------------------------
671
672fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
673status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
674
675Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
676
677The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
678each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
679
680Idle Run
681---- ---
682P Thread setup, but not started.
683C Thread created.
684I Thread initialized, waiting.
685 R Running, doing sequential reads.
686 r Running, doing random reads.
687 W Running, doing sequential writes.
688 w Running, doing random writes.
689 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
690 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
691 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
692V Running, doing verification of written data.
693E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
694_ Thread reaped.
695
696The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
697currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check, and the estimated
698completion percentage and time for the running group. It's impossible to
699estimate runtime of the following groups (if any).
700
701When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
702each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
703direction, the output looks like:
704
705Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
706 write: io= 32MiB, bw= 666KiB/s, runt= 50320msec
707 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
708 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
709 bw (KiB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
710 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969
711 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
712 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
713 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
714 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
715
716The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
717thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
718they denote:
719
720io= Number of megabytes io performed
721bw= Average bandwidth rate
722runt= The runtime of that thread
723 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
724 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
725 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
726 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there.
727 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
728 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
729 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
730 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
731 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
732 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
733 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
734 this thread received in this group. This last value is
735 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
736 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
737cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
738 of context switches this thread went through.
739IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
740 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
741 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
742 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
743 range from 16 to 31.
744IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
745 of them were short.
746IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
747 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
748 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
749 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
750 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
751 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
752
753After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
754will look like this:
755
756Run status group 0 (all jobs):
757 READ: io=64MiB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
758 WRITE: io=64MiB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
759
760For each data direction, it prints:
761
762io= Number of megabytes io performed.
763aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
764minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
765maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
766mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
767maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
768
769And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
770
771Disk stats (read/write):
772 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
773
774Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
775numbers denote:
776
777ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
778merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
779ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
780io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
781util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
782 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
783
784
7857.0 Terse output
786----------------
787
788For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
789of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
790The format is one long line of values, such as:
791
792client1;0;0;1906777;1090804;1790;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;929380;1152890;25.510151%;1078276.333333;128948.113404;0;0;0;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000%;0.000000;0.000000;100.000000%;0.000000%;324;100.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;100.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%
793;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%
794
795Split up, the format is as follows:
796
797 jobname, groupid, error
798 READ status:
799 KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec)
800 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
801 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
802 Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
803 WRITE status:
804 KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec)
805 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
806 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
807 Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
808 CPU usage: user, system, context switches
809 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
810 IO latencies: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, >=2000
811 Text description
812