bonnie++(8)bonnie++(8)NAME
bonnie++ - program to test hard drive performance.
SYNOPSIS
bonnie++ [-d dir] [-ssize(MiB)[:chunk-size(b)]] [-n num‐
ber-to-stat(*1024)[:max-size[:min-size][:num-directo‐
ries[:chunk-size]]]] [-m machine-name] [-r ram-size-in-MiB] [-x num‐
ber-of-tests] [-u uid-to-use:gid-to-use] [-g gid-to-use] [-q] [-f
size-for-char-io] [-b] [-D] [-p processes | -y p|s ] [-z seed-num|-Z
random-file]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the bonnie++, program.
Bonnie++ is a program to test hard drives and file systems for perfor‐
mance or the lack therof. There are a many different types of file sys‐
tem operations which different applications use to different degrees.
Bonnie++ tests some of them and for each test gives a result of the
amount of work done per second and the percentage of CPU time this
took. For performance results higher numbers are better, for CPU usage
lower are better (NB a configuration scoring a performance result of
2000 and a CPU result of 90% is better in terms of CPU use than a con‐
figuration delivering performance of 1000 and CPU usage of 60%).
There are two sections to the program's operations. The first is to
test the IO throughput in a fashion that is designed to simulate some
types of database applications. The second is to test creation, read‐
ing, and deleting many small files in a fashion similar to the usage
patterns of programs such as Squid or INN.
All the details of the tests performed by Bonnie++ are contained in the
file /usr/local/share/doc/bonnie++/readme.html
OPTIONS
For Bonnie++ every option is of the form of a hyphen followed by a let‐
ter and then the next parameter contains the value.
-d the directory to use for the tests.
-s the size of the file(s) for IO performance measures in
megabytes. If the size is greater than 1G then multiple files
will be used to store the data, and each file will be up to 1G
in size. This parameter may include the chunk size seperated
from the size by a colon. The chunk-size is measured in bytes
and must be a power of two from 256 to 1048576, the default is
8192. NB You can specify the size in giga-bytes or the
chunk-size in kilo-bytes if you add g or k to the end of the
number respectively.
If the specified size is 0 then this test will be skipped.
-n the number of files for the file creation test. This is measured
in multiples of 1024 files. This is because no-one will want to
test less than 1024 files, and we need the extra space on
braille displays.
If the specified number is 0 then this test will be skipped.
The default for this test is to test with 0 byte files. To use
files of other sizes you can specify number:max:min:num-directo‐
ries:chunk-size where max is the maximum size and min is the
minimum size (both default to 0 if not specified). If minimum
and maximum sizes are specified then every file will have a ran‐
dom size from the range min..max inclusive. If you specify a
number of directories then the files will be evenly distributed
amoung that many sub-directories.
If max is -1 then hard links will be created instead of files.
If max is -2 then soft links will be created instead of files.
-m name of the machine - for display purposes only.
-r RAM size in megabytes. If you specify this the other parameters
will be checked to ensure they make sense for a machine of that
much RAM. You should not need to do this in general use as it
should be able to discover the RAM size. NB If you specify a
size of 0 then all checks will be disabled...
-x number of test runs. This is useful if you want to perform more
than one test. It will dump output continuously in CSV format
until either the number of tests have been completed, or it is
killed.
-u user-id to use. When running as root specify the UID to use for
the tests. It is not recommended to use root (since the occa‐
sion when a Bonnie++ bug wiped out someone's system), so if you
really want to run as root then use -u root. Also if you want
to specify the group to run as then use the user:group format.
If you specify a user by name but no group then the primary
group of that user will be chosen. If you specify a user by
number and no group then the group will be nogroup.
-g group-id to use. Same as using :group for the -u parameter,
just a different way to specify it for compatibility with other
programs.
-q quiet mode. If specified then some of the extra informational
messages will be suppressed. Also the csv data will be the only
output on standard out and the plain text data will be on stan‐
dard error. This means you can run bonnie++ -q >> file.csv to
record your csv data.
-f size-for-char-io
fast mode control, skips per-char IO tests if no parameter, oth‐
erwise specifies the size of the tests for per-char IO tests
(default 20M).
-b no write buffering. fsync() after every write.
-p number of processes to serve semaphores for. This is used to
create the semaphores for synchronising multiple Bonnie++ pro‐
cesses. All the processes which are told to use the semaphore
with -ys will start each test with synchronization. Use "-p -1"
to delete the semaphore.
-y s|p perform synchronization before each test. Option s for sema‐
phores and option p for prompting.
-D use direct IO (O_DIRECT) for the bulk IO tests
-z seed
random number seed to repeat the same test.
-Z random-file
file containing random data in network byte order.
MULTIPLE PROCESSES
Run the following commands to run three copies of Bonnie++ simultane‐
ously:
bonnie++ -p3
bonnie++ -y > out1 &
bonnie++ -y > out2 &
bonnie++ -y > out3 &
OUTPUT
The primary output is plain-text in 80 columns which is designed to fit
well when pasted into email and which will work well with Braille dis‐
plays.
The second type of output is CSV (Comma Seperated Values). This can
easily be imported into any spread-sheet or database program. Also I
have included the programs bon_csv2html and bon_csv2txt to convert CSV
data to HTML and plain-ascii respectively.
For every test two numbers are reported, the amount of work done
(higher numbers are better) and the percentage of CPU time taken to
perform the work (lower numbers are better). If a test completes in
less than 500ms then the output will be displayed as "++++". This is
because such a test result can't be calculated accurately due to round‐
ing errors and I would rather display no result than a wrong result.
Data volumes for the 80 column text display use "K" for KiB (1024
bytes), "M" for MiB (1048576 bytes), and "G" for GiB (1073741824
bytes). So K/sec means a multiple of 1024 bytes per second.
AUTHOR
This program, its manual page, and the Debian package were written by
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>, parts of the program are based on
the work of Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>.
The documentation, the Perl scripts, and all the code for testing the
creation of thousands of files was written by Russell Coker, but the
entire package is under joint copyright with Tim Bray.
SIGNALS
Handles SIGINT and does a cleanup (which may take some time), a second
SIGINT or a SIGQUIT will cause it to immediately die.
SIGXCPU and SIGXFSZ act like SIGINT.
Ignores SIGHUP.
BUGS
The random file sizes will add up to different values for different
test runs. I plan to add some code that checks the sum and ensures
that the sum of the values will be the same on seperate runs.
AVAILABILITY
The source is available from http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++ .
See http://etbe.coker.com.au/category/benchmark for further informa‐
tion.
SEE ALSOzcav(8), getc_putc(8), bon_csv2html(1), bon_csv2txt(1)bonnie++(8)