fio resides in a git repo, the canonical place is:
-git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
+ git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
-If you are inside a corporate firewall, git:// may not always work for
-you. In that case you can use the http protocol, path is the same:
+When inside a corporate firewall, git:// URL sometimes does not work.
+If git:// does not work, use the http protocol instead:
-http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
+ http://git.kernel.dk/fio.git
-Snapshots are frequently generated and they include the git meta data as
-well. You can download them here:
+Snapshots are frequently generated and include the git meta data as well.
+Snapshots can download from:
-http://brick.kernel.dk/snaps/
+ http://brick.kernel.dk/snaps/
+
+There are also two official mirrors. Both of these are synced within
+an hour of commits landing at git.kernel.dk. So if the main repo is
+down for some reason, either one of those is safe to use:
+
+ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/fio.git
+ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/fio.git
+
+or
+
+ https://github.com/axboe/fio.git
Binary packages
Mailing list
------------
-There's a mailing list associated with fio. It's meant for general
-discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development - basically anything
-that has to do with fio. An automated mail detailing recent commits is
-automatically sent to the list at most daily. The list address is
-fio@vger.kernel.org, subscribe by sending an email to
-majordomo@vger.kernel.org with
+The fio project mailing list is meant for anything related to fio including
+general discussion, bug reporting, questions, and development.
+
+An automated mail detailing recent commits is automatically sent to the
+list at most daily. The list address is fio@vger.kernel.org, subscribe
+by sending an email to majordomo@vger.kernel.org with
-subscribe fio
+ subscribe fio
in the body of the email. Archives can be found here:
-http://www.spinics.net/lists/fio/
+ http://www.spinics.net/lists/fio/
and archives for the old list can be found here:
-http://maillist.kernel.dk/fio-devel/
+ http://maillist.kernel.dk/fio-devel/
Building
isn't the default, type 'gmake' instead of 'make'.
Configure will print the enabled options. Note that on Linux based
-platforms, you'll need to have the libaio development packages
-installed to use the libaio engine. Depending on distro, it is
-usually called libaio-devel or libaio-dev.
+platforms, the libaio development packages must be installed to use
+the libaio engine. Depending on distro, it is usually called
+libaio-devel or libaio-dev.
-For gfio, you need gtk 2.18 or newer and associated glib threads
-and cairo. gfio isn't built automatically, it needs to be enabled
+For gfio, gtk 2.18 (or newer), associated glib threads, and cairo are required
+to be installed. gfio isn't built automatically and can be enabled
with a --enable-gfio option to configure.
+To build FIO with a cross-compiler:
+ $ make clean
+ $ make CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/toolchain/prefix
+Configure will attempt to determine the target platform automatically.
+
+It's possible to build fio for ESX as well, use the --esx switch to
+configure.
+
Windows
-------
-On Windows Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is required in order to
-build fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX 3.7 from
+On Windows, Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is required in order to
+build fio. To create an MSI installer package install WiX 3.8 from
http://wixtoolset.org and run dobuild.cmd from the
os/windows directory.
-How to compile FIO on 64-bit Windows:
+How to compile fio on 64-bit Windows:
- 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe). Install 'make' and all
+ 1. Install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). Install 'make' and all
packages starting with 'mingw64-i686' and 'mingw64-x86_64'.
- 2. Download ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/prebuilt-dll-2-9-1-release/dll/x64/pthreadGC2.dll
- and copy to the fio source directory.
- 3. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
- 4. Go to the fio directory (source files).
- 5. Run 'make clean'.
- 6. Run 'make'.
+ 2. Open the Cygwin Terminal.
+ 3. Go to the fio directory (source files).
+ 4. Run 'make clean && make -j'.
-To build fio on 32-bit Windows, download x86/pthreadGC2.dll instead and do
-'./configure --build-32bit-win=yes' before 'make'.
+To build fio on 32-bit Windows, run './configure --build-32bit-win' before 'make'.
It's recommended that once built or installed, fio be run in a Command Prompt
or other 'native' console such as console2, since there are known to be display
--parse-only Parse options only, don't start any IO
--output Write output to file
--runtime Runtime in seconds
- --latency-log Generate per-job latency logs
--bandwidth-log Generate per-job bandwidth logs
--minimal Minimal (terse) output
--output-format=type Output format (terse,json,normal)
--version Print version info and exit
--help Print this page
--cpuclock-test Perform test/validation of CPU clock
+ --crctest[=test] Test speed of checksum functions
--cmdhelp=cmd Print command help, "all" for all of them
--enghelp=engine Print ioengine help, or list available ioengines
--enghelp=engine,cmd Print help for an ioengine cmd
--eta=when When ETA estimate should be printed
May be "always", "never" or "auto"
--eta-newline=time Force a new line for every 'time' period passed
+ --status-interval=t Force full status dump every 't' period passed
--section=name Only run specified section in job file.
Multiple sections can be specified.
--alloc-size=kb Set smalloc pool to this size in kb (def 1024)
--idle-prof=option Report cpu idleness on a system or percpu basis
(option=system,percpu) or run unit work
calibration only (option=calibrate).
+ --inflate-log=log Inflate and output compressed log
Any parameters following the options will be assumed to be job files,
-unless they match a job file parameter. You can add as many as you want,
-each job file will be regarded as a separate group and fio will stonewall
-its execution.
+unless they match a job file parameter. Multiple job files can be listed
+and each job file will be regarded as a separate group. fio will stonewall
+execution between each group.
-The --readonly switch is an extra safety guard to prevent accidentally
-turning on a write setting when that is not desired. Fio will only write
-if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given, but this extra safety net can
-be used as an extra precaution. It will also enable a write check in the
-io engine core to prevent an accidental write due to a fio bug.
+The --readonly option is an extra safety guard to prevent users from
+accidentally starting a write workload when that is not desired. Fio
+will only write if rw=write/randwrite/rw/randrw is given. This extra
+safety net can be used as an extra precaution as --readonly will also
+enable a write check in the io engine core to prevent writes due to
+unknown user space bug(s).
-The debug switch allows adding options that trigger certain logging
-options in fio. Currently the options are:
+The --debug option triggers additional logging by fio.
+Currently, additional logging is available for:
process Dump info related to processes
file Dump info related to file actions
mutex Dump info only related to mutex up/down ops
profile Dump info related to profile extensions
time Dump info related to internal time keeping
+ net Dump info related to networking connections
+ rate Dump info related to IO rate switching
+ compress Dump info related to log compress/decompress
? or help Show available debug options.
-You can specify as many as you want, eg --debug=file,mem will enable
+One can specify multiple debug options: e.g. --debug=file,mem will enable
file and memory debugging.
-The section switch is meant to make it easier to ship a bigger job file
-instead of several smaller ones. Say you define a job file with light,
-moderate, and heavy parts. Then you can ask fio to run the given part
-only by giving it a --section=heavy command line option. The section
-option only applies to job sections, the reserved 'global' section is
-always parsed and taken into account.
+The --section option allows one to combine related jobs into one file.
+E.g. one job file could define light, moderate, and heavy sections. Tell fio to
+run only the "heavy" section by giving --section=heavy command line option.
+One can also specify the "write" operations in one section and "verify"
+operation in another section. The --section option only applies to job
+sections. The reserved 'global' section is always parsed and used.
+
+The --alloc-size switch allows one to use a larger pool size for smalloc.
+If running large jobs with randommap enabled, fio can run out of memory.
+Smalloc is an internal allocator for shared structures from a fixed size
+memory pool. The pool size defaults to 1024k and can grow to 128 pools.
-Fio has an internal allocator for shared memory called smalloc. It
-allocates shared structures from this pool. The pool defaults to 1024k
-in size, and can grow to 128 pools. If running large jobs with randommap
-enabled it can run out of memory, in which case the --alloc-size switch
-is handy for starting with a larger pool size. The backing store is
-files in /tmp. Fio cleans up after itself, while it is running you
-may see .fio_smalloc.* files in /tmp.
+NOTE: While running .fio_smalloc.* backing store files are visible in /tmp.
Job file
--------
-See the HOWTO file for a more detailed description of parameters and what
-they mean. This file contains the terse version. You can describe big and
-complex setups with the command line, but generally it's a lot easier to
-just write a simple job file to describe the workload. The job file format
-is in the ini style format, as that is easy to read and write for the user.
+See the HOWTO file for a complete description of job file syntax and
+parameters. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If used with
+an option argument, --cmdhelp will detail the given option. The job file
+format is in the ini style format, as that is easy for the user to review
+and modify.
-The HOWTO or man page has a full list of all options, along with
-descriptions, etc. The --cmdhelp option also lists all options. If
-used with an option argument, it will detail that particular option.
+This README contains the terse version. Job files can describe big and
+complex setups that are not possible with the command line. Job files
+are a good practice even for simple jobs since the file provides an
+easily accessed record of the workload and can include comments.
+
+See the examples/ directory for inspiration on how to write job files. Note
+the copyright and license requirements currently apply to examples/ files.
Client/server
------------
-Normally you would run fio as a stand-alone application on the machine
-where the IO workload should be generated. However, it is also possible to
-run the frontend and backend of fio separately. This makes it possible to
-have a fio server running on the machine(s) where the IO workload should
-be running, while controlling it from another machine.
+Normally fio is invoked as a stand-alone application on the machine
+where the IO workload should be generated. However, the frontend and
+backend of fio can be run separately. Ie the fio server can generate
+an IO workload on the "Device Under Test" while being controlled from
+another machine.
-To start the server, you would do:
+Start the server on the machine which has access to the storage DUT:
fio --server=args
-on that machine, where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments
-are of the form 'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4)
-for TCP/IP v4, 'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket.
+where args defines what fio listens to. The arguments are of the form
+'type,hostname or IP,port'. 'type' is either 'ip' (or ip4) for TCP/IP v4,
+'ip6' for TCP/IP v6, or 'sock' for a local unix domain socket.
'hostname' is either a hostname or IP address, and 'port' is the port to
listen to (only valid for TCP/IP, not a local socket). Some examples:
Start a fio server, listening on the local socket /tmp/fio.sock.
-When a server is running, you can connect to it from a client. The client
-is run with:
+Once a server is running, a "client" can connect to the fio server with:
-fio --local-args --client=server --remote-args <job file(s)>
+fio --local-args --client=<server> --remote-args <job file(s)>
-where --local-args are arguments that are local to the client where it is
+where --local-args are arguments for the client where it is
running, 'server' is the connect string, and --remote-args and <job file(s)>
are sent to the server. The 'server' string follows the same format as it
does on the server side, to allow IP/hostname/socket and port strings.
-You can connect to multiple clients as well, to do that you could run:
-fio --client=server2 <job file(s)> --client=server2 <job file(s)>
+Fio can connect to multiple servers this way:
+
+fio --client=<server1> <job file(s)> --client=<server2> <job file(s)>
Platforms
---------
-Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, Windows
-and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on some of
-the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that platform
-(like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
+Fio works on (at least) Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
+Windows and FreeBSD. Some features and/or options may only be available on
+some of the platforms, typically because those features only apply to that
+platform (like the solarisaio engine, or the splice engine on Linux).
Some features are not available on FreeBSD/Solaris even if they could be
implemented, I'd be happy to take patches for that. An example of that is
appreciated. There's a lot of value in having the same test/benchmark tool
available on all platforms.
-Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. If you get messages like:
+Note that POSIX aio is not enabled by default on AIX. Messages like these:
Symbol resolution failed for /usr/lib/libc.a(posix_aio.o) because:
Symbol _posix_kaio_rdwr (number 2) is not exported from dependent module /unix.
-you need to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root:
+indicate one needs to enable POSIX aio. Run the following commands as root:
# lsdev -C -l posix_aio0
posix_aio0 Defined Posix Asynchronous I/O
projects / fio.git / blobdiff