The ioping command generates a report of device I/O latency in real-time. It will continuously “ping” the specified device with requests and print information about each request at the command-line. By default, this information tracks how long it took an I/O request to finish. Aside from specifying a device to test, you can also specify a path name to test whatever device is associated with that path.
Consider using ioping to troubleshoot latency issues with a storage devices, especially if you believe your read and/or write speeds are slower than they should be.
Syntax
The syntax of the ioping command is:
# ioping [options] {file/ directory/device name}
If you encounter below error while running the ioping command:
ioping: command not found
you may try installing the below package as per your choice of distribution:
| Distribution | Command |
|---|---|
| OS X | brew install ioping |
| Debian | apt-get install ioping |
| Ubuntu | apt-get install ioping |
| Alpine | apk add ioping |
| Arch Linux | pacman -S ioping |
| Kali Linux | apt-get install ioping |
| Fedora | dnf install ioping |
| Raspbian | apt-get install ioping |
ioping Command Options
The following table lists some options you can use with the ioping command.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| -c {count} | Specify the number of I/O requests to perform before stopping. |
| -i {time} | Set the time (interval) between I/O requests. |
| -t {time} | Set the minimum valid request time. Requests faster than this are ignored. |
| -T {time} | Set the maximum valid request time. Requests slower than this are ignored. |
| -s {size} | Set the size of requests. |
ioping Command Examples
1. Show disk I/O latency using the default values and the current directory:
# ioping .
2. Measure latency on /tmp using 10 requests of 1 megabyte each:
# ioping -c 10 -s 1M /tmp
3. Measure disk seek rate on `/dev/sdX`:
# ioping -R /dev/sdX
4. Measure disk sequential speed on `/dev/sdX`:
# ioping -RL /dev/sdX
5. To get the average seek time of a device, we need to run the following ioping command:
# ioping -R /dev/sda
Conclusion
The ioping command can be used to perform simple latency tests on a disk. Latency is a measure of the delay in data transfer. The primary speed calculation of a storage devices is the IOPS, which stands for input/output operations per second. You need to take this value into consideration when choosing which underlying storage type you want to use for a storage resource. As you might expect, the IOPS for HDD devices is less than for SDD devices.