From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:50:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:50:43 -0500 Received: from ir.com.au ([210.8.187.18]:3021 "EHLO ir_nt_server2.ir.com.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:50:31 -0500 Message-ID: From: Tony.Young@ir.com To: chris@scary.beasts.org Cc: slug@slug.org.au, csa@oss.sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: RE: Linux Disk Performance/File IO per process Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 13:50:26 +1100 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > -----Original Message----- > From: Chris Evans [mailto:chris@scary.beasts.org] > Sent: Monday, 29 January 2001 13:04 > To: Tony Young > Cc: slug@slug.org.au; csa@oss.sgi.com; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Subject: Re: Linux Disk Performance/File IO per process > > > > On Mon, 29 Jan 2001 Tony.Young@ir.com wrote: > > > All, > > > > I work for a company that develops a systems and > performance management > > product for Unix (as well as PC and TANDEM) called > PROGNOSIS. Currently we > > support AIX, HP, Solaris, UnixWare, IRIX, and Linux. > > > > I've hit a bit of a wall trying to expand the data provided > by our Linux > > solution - I can't seem to find anywhere that provides the > metrics needed to > > calculate disk busy in the kernel! This is a major piece of > information that > > any mission critical system administrator needs to > successfully monitor > > their systems. > > Stephen Tweedie has a rather funky i/o stats enhancement patch which > should provide what you need. It comes with RedHat7.0 and gives decent > disk statistics in /proc/partitions. > > Unfortunately this patch is not yet in the 2.2 or 2.4 kernel. > I'd like to > see it make the kernel as a 2.4.x item. Failing that, it'll > probably make > the 2.5 kernel. > > Cheers > Chris > Thanks to both Jens and Chris - this provides the information I need to obtain our busy rate It's unfortunate that the kernel needs to be patched to provide this information - hopefully it will become part of the kernel soon. I had a response saying that this shouldn't become part of the kernel due to the performance cost that obtaining such data will involve. I agree that a cost is involved here, however I think it's up to the user to decide which cost is more expensive to them - getting the data, or not being able to see how busy their disks are. My feeling here is that this support could be user configurable at run time - eg 'cat 1 > /proc/getdiskperf'. Thanks for your quick responses. Tony... - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/