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I/O statistics fields

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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

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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