Ubuntu Manpage: iowatcher - Create visualizations from blktrace results

NAME

       iowatcher - Create visualizations from blktrace results

SYNOPSIS

       iowatcher [options] [--] [program arguments ...]

DESCRIPTION

       iowatcher  graphs  the  results of a blktrace run.  It can graph the result of an existing
       blktrace, start a new blktrace, or start a new blktrace and a benchmark run.  It can  then
       create  an  image or movie of the IO from a given trace.  iowatcher can produce either SVG
       files or movies in mp4 format (with ffmpeg) or ogg format (with png2theora).

OPTIONS

--help Print a brief usage summary.

-d, --device device
Controls which device you are tracing. You can only trace one device at a time for
now. It is sent directly to blktrace, and only needed when you are making a new
trace.

-D, --blktrace-destination destination
Destination for blktrace.

-p, --prog
Run a program while blktrace is run. The program and its arguments must be
specified after all other options. Note that this option previously required the
program to be given as a single argument but it now tells iowatcher to expect extra
arguments which it should be run during the trace.

-- End option parsing. If --prog is specified, everything after -- is the program to
be run. This can be useful if the program name could otherwise be mistaken for an
option.

-K, --keep-movie-svgs
Keep the SVG files generated for movie mode.

-t, --trace path
Specify the name of the file or directory in which blktrace output is located.
iowatcher uses a dump from blkparse, so this option tries to guess the name of the
corresponding per-CPU blktrace data files if the dump file doesn't already exist.
To add multiple traces to a given graph, you can specify --trace more than once.
If path is a directory, iowatcher will use the name of the directory as the base
name of the dump file and all trace files found inside the directory will be
processed.

-l, --label label
Sets a label in the graph for a trace file. The labels are added in the same order
as the trace files.

-m, --movie [style]
Create a movie. The file format depends on the extension used in the -o file
option. If you specify an .ogv or .ogg extension, the result will be Ogg Theora
video, if png2theora is available. If you use an .mp4 extension, the result will
be an mp4 video if ffmpeg is available. You can use any other extension, but the
end result will be an mp4. The accepted style values are spindle for a circular
disc-like effect (default) or rect for a rectangular graph style.

-T, --title title
Set a title to be placed at the top of the graph.

-o, --output file
Output filename for the SVG image or video. The video format used will depend on
the file name extension. See --movie for details.

-r, --rolling seconds
Control the duration for the rolling average. iowatcher tries to smooth out bumpy
graphs by averaging the current second with seconds from the past. Larger numbers
here give you flatter graphs.

-h, --height height
Set the height of each graph

-w, --width width
Set the width of each graph

-c, --columns columns
Number of columns in graph output

-x, --xzoom min:max
Limit processed time range to min:max.

-y, --yzoom min:max
Limit processed sectors to min:max.

-a, --io-plot-action action
Plot action (one of Q, D, or C) in the IO graph.

-P, --per-process-io
Distinguish between processes in the IO graph.

-O, --only-graph graph
Add a single graph to the output (see section GRAPHS for options). By default all
graphs are included. Use -O to generate only the required graphs. -O may be used
more than once.

-N, --no-graph type
Remove a single graph from the output (see section GRAPHS for options). This
option may be used more than once.

GRAPHS

       Values accepted by the -O and -N options are:

          io, tput, latency, queue_depth, iops, cpu-sys, cpu-io, cpu-irq, cpu-user, cpu-soft

EXAMPLES

       Generate graph from the existing trace.dump:

              # iowatcher -t trace

       Skip the IO graph:

              # iowatcher -t trace.dump -o trace.svg -N io

       Only graph tput and latency:

              # iowatcher -t trace.dump -o trace.svg -O tput -O latency

       Generate a graph from two runs, and label them:

              # iowatcher -t ext4.dump -t xfs.dump -l Ext4 -l XFS -o trace.svg

       Run  a  fio  benchmark  and  store  the  trace  in trace.dump, add a title to the top, use
       /dev/sda for blktrace:

              # iowatcher -d /dev/sda -t trace.dump -T 'Fio Benchmark' -p fio some_job_file

       Make a movie from an existing trace:

              # iowatcher -t trace --movie -o trace.mp4

AUTHORS

       iowatcher was created and is maintained by Chris Mason.

       This man page was largely written by Andrew Price based on Chris's original README.

COPYRIGHT

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU General Public License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

       This  program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
       without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR  PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
       if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,  51  Franklin  Street,  Fifth  Floor,
       Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA