'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
-randomly reading from a 128MiB file.
+randomly reading from a 128MB file.
; -- start job file --
[global]
Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
-increased the buffer size used to 32KiB and define numjobs to 4 to
+increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
-to their own 64MiB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
+to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
specify:
$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
+4.1 Environment variables
+-------------------------
+
fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
inspiration.
+4.2 Reserved keywords
+---------------------
+
+Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
+internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
+
+$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
+$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
+$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
+
+These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
+automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
+is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
+perform actions like:
+
+size=8*$mb_memory
+
+and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
+machine.
+
5.0 Detailed list of parameters
-------------------------------
a string. The following types are used:
str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
-time Integer with possible time postfix. In seconds unless otherwise
+time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
minutes, and hours.
-int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a postfix
- describing the base of the number. Accepted postfixes are k/m/g,
- meaning kilo, mega, and giga. So if you want to specify 4096,
- you could either write out '4096' or just give 4k. The postfixes
- signify base 2 values, so 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on.
- If the option accepts an upper and lower range, use a colon ':'
- or minus '-' to separate such values. May also include a prefix
- to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number is assumed to
- be hexadecimal. See irange.
+int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
+ describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
+ meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
+ sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
+ as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
+ out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
+ 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
+ set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
+ case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
+ disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
+ the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
+ range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
+ include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
+ is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
true and false (1 and 0).
-irange Integer range with postfix. Allows value range to be given, such
+irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
as the two working files, you would use
- filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. '-' is a reserved name, meaning
- stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
+ filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. If the wanted filename does need to
+ include a colon, then escape that with a '\' character. For
+ instance, if the filename is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would
+ use filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name,
+ meaning stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
direction set.
opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
- a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset - this
- is only useful for random IO, where fio would normally
- generate a new random offset for every IO. If you append
- eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
+ a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
+ one by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
+ For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
+ passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. See the
+ 'rw_sequencer' option.
+
+rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
+ the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
+ number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
+ values are:
+
+ sequential Generate sequential offset
+ identical Generate the same offset
+
+ 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
+ normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
+ append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
- that.
+ that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
+ 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
+ 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
+ the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
+ offset.
+
+kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
+ Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
+ ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
+ 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
+fallocate=bool By default, fio will use fallocate() to advise the system
+ of the size of the file we are going to write. This can be
+ turned off with fallocate=0. May not be available on all
+ supported platforms.
+
fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
Unless specific nrfiles and filesize options are given,
fio will divide this size between the available files
- specified by the job.
+ specified by the job. If not set, fio will use the full
+ size of the given files or devices. If the the files
+ do not exist, size must be given.
filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
will select sizes for files at random within the given range
not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
-fsyncdata=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
+fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
metadata blocks.
+ In FreeBSD there is no fdatasync(), this falls back to
+ using fsync()
+
+sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
+ write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
+ have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
+ can currently be one or more of:
+
+ wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
+ write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
+ wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
+
+ So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
+ use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
+ every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
+ This option is Linux specific.
overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
after every block.
rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
- the normal postfix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
+ the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
- Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MiB in size. So
+ Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
hugepage-size=int
Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
- to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MiB.
+ to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
- and then drop the cache.
+ and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
+ that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
+ multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
+ IO.
unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
it in the header of each block.
crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
- provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors.
+ provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
+ back to regular software crc32c, if not
+ supported by the system.
crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
it in the header of each block.
sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
+ sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
+
meta Write extra information about each io
(timestamp, block number etc.). The block
- number is verified.
+ number is verified. See also verify_pattern.
null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
internals with ioengine=null, not for much
This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
system to make sure that the written data is also
- correctly read back.
+ correctly read back. If the data direction given is
+ a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
+ verify a previously written file. If the data direction
+ includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
+ newly written data.
verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
evenly.
-verify_pattern=int If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
+verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
- buffer at the time. The verify_pattern cannot be larger than
- a 32-bit quantity.
+ buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
+ The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
+ be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
+ with verify=meta.
verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
failure.
+
+verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
+ thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
+ async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
+ causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
+ to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
+ option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
+ iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
+ IO in flight while verifies are running.
+
+verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
+ async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
+ format used.
+
+verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
+ job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
+ other words, everything is written then everything is read
+ back and verified. You may want to verify continually
+ instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
+ associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
+ verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
+ holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
+ will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
+
+ will verify the previously written blocks before continuing
+ to write new ones.
+
+verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
+ if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
+ the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
+ is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
+ less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
+ if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
+ blocks will be verified more than once.
stonewall Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before
starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
- file first (blktrace <device> -d file_for_fio.bin).
+ file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
+
+replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
+ is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
+ replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
+ setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
+ attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
+ respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
+ given device, but different timings.
+
+replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
+ default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
+ device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
+ undesireable because on a different machine those major/minor
+ numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
+ the same system can also result in a different major/minor
+ mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
+ the single specified device regardless of the device it was
+ recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
+ IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
+ multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
+ contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
+ replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
+ blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
+ independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
+ the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
filename. For this option, the postfix is _bw.log.
write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
- completion latencies instead. If no filename is given
- with this option, the default filename of "jobname_type.log"
- is used. Even if the filename is given, fio will still
- append the type of log. So if one specifies
+ submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
+ filename is given with this option, the default filename of
+ "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
+ fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
write_lat_log=foo
- The actual log names will be foo_clat.log and foo_slat.log.
- This helps fio_generate_plot fine the logs automatically.
+ The actual log names will be foo_slat.log, foo_slat.log,
+ and foo_lat.log. This helps fio_generate_plot fine the logs
+ automatically.
lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
supports it. Defaults to on.
-disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. Useful
+disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
disable_bw as well.
+disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
+ disable_lat.
+
disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
- disable_clat.
+ disable_slat.
disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
- disable_clat.
+ disable_lat.
gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
(disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
jobs.
+
continue_on_error=bool Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
run.
+cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
+ be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
+ mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
+ mounted, you can do so with:
+
+ # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
+
+cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
+ the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
+ are in the range of 100..1000.
+
+cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
+ the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
+ cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
+ This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
+ files after job completion. Default: false
+
+uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
+ this value before the thread/process does any work.
+
+gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
6.0 Interpreting the output
---------------------------
direction, the output looks like:
Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
- write: io= 32MiB, bw= 666KiB/s, runt= 50320msec
+ write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, runt= 50320msec
slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
- bw (KiB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
+ bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
will look like this:
Run status group 0 (all jobs):
- READ: io=64MiB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
- WRITE: io=64MiB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
+ READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
+ WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
For each data direction, it prints:
of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
The format is one long line of values, such as:
-client1;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%
-;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%
+2;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%
+A description of this job goes here.
-To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option.
+The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
+
+To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
+value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
+be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
+signify that change.
Split up, the format is as follows:
- jobname, groupid, error
+ version, jobname, groupid, error
READ status:
- KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec)
+ KB IO, bandwidth (KB/sec), runtime (msec)
Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
+ Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
WRITE status:
- KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec)
+ KB IO, bandwidth (KB/sec), runtime (msec)
Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
+ Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
- IO latencies: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, >=2000
- Text description
-
+ IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
+ IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
+ Additional Info (dependant on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
+
+ Additional Info (dependant on description being set): Text description
projects / fio.git / blobdiff