File: [Development] / linux-2.6-xfs / Documentation / iostats.txt (download)
Revision 1.2, Wed Sep 12 17:09:56 2007 UTC (10 years, 1 month ago) by tes.longdrop.melbourne.sgi.com
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.1: +1 -1
lines
Update 2.6.x-xfs to 2.6.23-rc4.
Also update fs/xfs with external mainline changes.
There were 12 such missing commits that I detected:
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commit ad690ef9e690f6c31f7d310b09ef1314bcec9033
Author: Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>
xfs ioctl __user annotations
commit 20c2df83d25c6a95affe6157a4c9cac4cf5ffaac
Author: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
mm: Remove slab destructors from kmem_cache_create().
commit d0217ac04ca6591841e5665f518e38064f4e65bd
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
mm: fault feedback #1
commit 54cb8821de07f2ffcd28c380ce9b93d5784b40d7
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
mm: merge populate and nopage into fault (fixes nonlinear)
commit d00806b183152af6d24f46f0c33f14162ca1262a
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
mm: fix fault vs invalidate race for linear mappings
commit a569425512253992cc64ebf8b6d00a62f986db3e
Author: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
knfsd: exportfs: add exportfs.h header
commit 831441862956fffa17b9801db37e6ea1650b0f69
Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Freezer: make kernel threads nonfreezable by default
commit 8e1f936b73150f5095448a0fee6d4f30a1f9001d
Author: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
mm: clean up and kernelify shrinker registration
commit 5ffc4ef45b3b0a57872f631b4e4ceb8ace0d7496
Author: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
sendfile: remove .sendfile from filesystems that use generic_file_sendfile()
commit 8bb7844286fb8c9fce6f65d8288aeb09d03a5e0d
Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Add suspend-related notifications for CPU hotplug
commit 59c51591a0ac7568824f541f57de967e88adaa07
Author: Michael Opdenacker <michael@free-electrons.com>
Fix occurrences of "the the "
commit 0ceb331433e8aad9c5f441a965d7c681f8b9046f
Author: Dmitriy Monakhov <dmonakhov@openvz.org>
mm: move common segment checks to separate helper function
--------
Merge of 2.6.x-xfs-melb:linux:29656b by kenmcd.
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I/O statistics fields
---------------
Last modified Sep 30, 2003
Since 2.4.20 (and some versions before, with patches), and 2.5.45,
more extensive disk statistics have been introduced to help measure disk
activity. Tools such as sar and iostat typically interpret these and do
the work for you, but in case you are interested in creating your own
tools, the fields are explained here.
In 2.4 now, the information is found as additional fields in
/proc/partitions. In 2.6, the same information is found in two
places: one is in the file /proc/diskstats, and the other is within
the sysfs file system, which must be mounted in order to obtain
the information. Throughout this document we'll assume that sysfs
is mounted on /sys, although of course it may be mounted anywhere.
Both /proc/diskstats and sysfs use the same source for the information
and so should not differ.
Here are examples of these different formats:
2.4:
3 0 39082680 hda 446216 784926 9550688 4382310 424847 312726 5922052 19310380 0 3376340 23705160
3 1 9221278 hda1 35486 0 35496 38030 0 0 0 0 0 38030 38030
2.6 sysfs:
446216 784926 9550688 4382310 424847 312726 5922052 19310380 0 3376340 23705160
35486 38030 38030 38030
2.6 diskstats:
3 0 hda 446216 784926 9550688 4382310 424847 312726 5922052 19310380 0 3376340 23705160
3 1 hda1 35486 38030 38030 38030
On 2.4 you might execute "grep 'hda ' /proc/partitions". On 2.6, you have
a choice of "cat /sys/block/hda/stat" or "grep 'hda ' /proc/diskstats".
The advantage of one over the other is that the sysfs choice works well
if you are watching a known, small set of disks. /proc/diskstats may
be a better choice if you are watching a large number of disks because
you'll avoid the overhead of 50, 100, or 500 or more opens/closes with
each snapshot of your disk statistics.
In 2.4, the statistics fields are those after the device name. In
the above example, the first field of statistics would be 446216.
By contrast, in 2.6 if you look at /sys/block/hda/stat, you'll
find just the eleven fields, beginning with 446216. If you look at
/proc/diskstats, the eleven fields will be preceded by the major and
minor device numbers, and device name. Each of these formats provide
eleven fields of statistics, each meaning exactly the same things.
All fields except field 9 are cumulative since boot. Field 9 should
go to zero as I/Os complete; all others only increase. Yes, these are
32 bit unsigned numbers, and on a very busy or long-lived system they
may wrap. Applications should be prepared to deal with that; unless
your observations are measured in large numbers of minutes or hours,
they should not wrap twice before you notice them.
Each set of stats only applies to the indicated device; if you want
system-wide stats you'll have to find all the devices and sum them all up.
Field 1 -- # of reads issued
This is the total number of reads completed successfully.
Field 2 -- # of reads merged, field 6 -- # of writes merged
Reads and writes which are adjacent to each other may be merged for
efficiency. Thus two 4K reads may become one 8K read before it is
ultimately handed to the disk, and so it will be counted (and queued)
as only one I/O. This field lets you know how often this was done.
Field 3 -- # of sectors read
This is the total number of sectors read successfully.
Field 4 -- # of milliseconds spent reading
This is the total number of milliseconds spent by all reads (as
measured from __make_request() to end_that_request_last()).
Field 5 -- # of writes completed
This is the total number of writes completed successfully.
Field 7 -- # of sectors written
This is the total number of sectors written successfully.
Field 8 -- # of milliseconds spent writing
This is the total number of milliseconds spent by all writes (as
measured from __make_request() to end_that_request_last()).
Field 9 -- # of I/Os currently in progress
The only field that should go to zero. Incremented as requests are
given to appropriate struct request_queue and decremented as they finish.
Field 10 -- # of milliseconds spent doing I/Os
This field is increases so long as field 9 is nonzero.
Field 11 -- weighted # of milliseconds spent doing I/Os
This field is incremented at each I/O start, I/O completion, I/O
merge, or read of these stats by the number of I/Os in progress
(field 9) times the number of milliseconds spent doing I/O since the
last update of this field. This can provide an easy measure of both
I/O completion time and the backlog that may be accumulating.
To avoid introducing performance bottlenecks, no locks are held while
modifying these counters. This implies that minor inaccuracies may be
introduced when changes collide, so (for instance) adding up all the
read I/Os issued per partition should equal those made to the disks ...
but due to the lack of locking it may only be very close.
In 2.6, there are counters for each cpu, which made the lack of locking
almost a non-issue. When the statistics are read, the per-cpu counters
are summed (possibly overflowing the unsigned 32-bit variable they are
summed to) and the result given to the user. There is no convenient
user interface for accessing the per-cpu counters themselves.
Disks vs Partitions
-------------------
There were significant changes between 2.4 and 2.6 in the I/O subsystem.
As a result, some statistic information disappeared. The translation from
a disk address relative to a partition to the disk address relative to
the host disk happens much earlier. All merges and timings now happen
at the disk level rather than at both the disk and partition level as
in 2.4. Consequently, you'll see a different statistics output on 2.6 for
partitions from that for disks. There are only *four* fields available
for partitions on 2.6 machines. This is reflected in the examples above.
Field 1 -- # of reads issued
This is the total number of reads issued to this partition.
Field 2 -- # of sectors read
This is the total number of sectors requested to be read from this
partition.
Field 3 -- # of writes issued
This is the total number of writes issued to this partition.
Field 4 -- # of sectors written
This is the total number of sectors requested to be written to
this partition.
Note that since the address is translated to a disk-relative one, and no
record of the partition-relative address is kept, the subsequent success
or failure of the read cannot be attributed to the partition. In other
words, the number of reads for partitions is counted slightly before time
of queuing for partitions, and at completion for whole disks. This is
a subtle distinction that is probably uninteresting for most cases.
Additional notes
----------------
In 2.6, sysfs is not mounted by default. If your distribution of
Linux hasn't added it already, here's the line you'll want to add to
your /etc/fstab:
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
In 2.6, all disk statistics were removed from /proc/stat. In 2.4, they
appear in both /proc/partitions and /proc/stat, although the ones in
/proc/stat take a very different format from those in /proc/partitions
(see proc(5), if your system has it.)
-- ricklind@us.ibm.com