iowatcher/README

iowatcher graphs the results of a blktrace run.  It has a few different modes:

	* Graph the result of an existing blktrace

	* Start a new blktrace

	* Start a new blktrace and a benchmark run

	* Make a movie of the IO from a given trace (only mp4 for now)

Output:

	iowatcher can produce either svg files or mp4 movies.  Most browsers
	can view the svg files, or you can use rsvg-view-3 from librsvg.
	rsvg-convert can turn the svgs into many other formats.

Building:

	Type make and make install.  We need ffmpeg or png2theora, and
	librsvg to make movies, otherwise there are no dependencies.

The basic options:

	-d 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.

	-t controls the name of the blktrace file.  iowatcher uses a dump from
	   blkparse, so -t tries to guess the name of the corresponding
	   per CPU blktrace data files if the dump file doesn't already exist.

	   If you want more than one trace in a given graph, you can specify
	   -t more than once.

	-F Add a fio bandwidth log graph.  You need to run fio --bandwidth-log
	   to get one of these, and then pass either the read log or the write
	   log into iowatcher.

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

	-m Create a movie.  The file format depends on the extension used in the
	   -o filename.* 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 avilable.  You can use any other extension, but the end
	   result will be an mp4.

	   You can use --movie=spindle or --movie=rect, which changes the
	   style of the IO mapping.

	-T Set a title for the graph.  This goes at the top of the image.

	-o output filename.  The default is trace.svg.  iowatcher is
	   only able to create svg for now.

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

	-P add per-process tags to the IO.  Each process responsible for
	   submitting the IO gets a different color.

	-O add a single graph to the output.  By default all the graphs
	   are included, but with -O you get only the graphs you ask for.
	   -O may be used more than once.

	-N remove a single graph from the output.  This may also be used more
	   than once.

	Choices for -O and -N are:
	   io, fio, 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.dump -o trace.svg
	
	# 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

Please email chris.mason@fusionio.com with any questions