dio - device I/O analysis tool
dio is a device I/O analysis tool. It takes a device name and a time interval in seconds as parameters. dio sam- ples kernel statistics at the specified time interval and uses them to derive useful real-time and cumulative per- formance statistics. It presents the output in a standard terminal window using the standard curses library, which contains the output on visible terminal. The approach offers a more intuitive visual presentation of the data.
The device name can be an entire disk, a disk slice, a metadevice or any other kind of I/O device. The -l option can be used to list the names of all available I/O devices.
The abbreviated column headings on the output are explained below:
| Col | Description |
|---|---|
| br | number of bytes read during time interval |
| bw | number of bytes written during time interval |
| rkb/s | average kilobytes per second read from device |
| wkb/s | average kilobytes per second written to the device |
| %r:%w | ratio of data read to data written. Useful for visualising the changing direction of data flow |
| ro | number of read operations |
| wo | number of write operations |
| ios | I/O operations current in progress |
| rt | time spent reading |
| wt | time spent writing |
Also included in the output is maximum recorded read rate recorded, maximum write rate, total megabytes read and total megabytes written during the period that dio was running.
Both rt and wt fields can legitimately be greater than the elapsed time of the interval. These present the sum of time spent actioning read and write requests and these will often be done in parallel when the I/O device is busy. In such cases the total write/read time can be many time greater than elapsed time, depending on the capability of the device.