Iometer

IOMeter running under WinE (click to enlarge).

IOMeter is a disk I/O benchmark. You can measure e.g. your harddisk's speed for 4K block size, 50% read, 0% random and so on.

Here I give an example how to make IOMeter run on Linux. Note that the GUI ("iometer") only exists for Windows while the Linux packages only contain the backend ("dynamo"). Here is how to do it using WinE and IOMeter 2006.07.27 for Windows. Find out your distribution and proceed accordingly

SUSE Linux 12.1

• Install wine

yast -i wine

• download IOMeter from sourceforge

cd
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/iometer/iometer-stable/2006-07-27/iometer-2006.07.27.win32.i386-setup.exe

• install IOMeter like this

cd
wine iometer-2006.07.27.win32.i386-setup.exe

• Start wine

cd
cd ".wine/drive_c/Program Files/Iometer.org/Iometer 2006.07.27"
wine Dynamo.exe & wine Iometer.exe

Kubuntu 11.10 x64

• Install some wine dependencies

sudo apt-get install gcc flex bison xserver-xorg-dev libfreetype6-dev make

• Install wine

wget http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.3.32.tar.bz2
bunzip2 wine-1.3.32.tar.bz2
tar xvf wine-1.3.32.tar
cd wine-1.3.32
./configure && make && make install

• download IOMeter from sourceforge

cd
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/iometer/iometer-stable/2006-07-27/iometer-2006.07.27.win32.i386-setup.exe

• install IOMeter like this

cd
wine iometer-2006.07.27.win32.i386-setup.exe

• Start dynamo

cd
cd ".wine/drive_c/Program Files/Iometer.org/Iometer 2006.07.27"
wine Dynamo.exe

• start IOMeter

wine Iometer.exe

• delete all workers but one by clicking onto "Disconnect Selected Worker or Manager"
• select "Access Specifications" -> 512B; 100% Read; 0% random -> Add
• select "Disk Targets" -> Maximum Disk Size -> 5000 Sectors
• select a target. In this example, let's just choose C:.
• select Test Setup -> Run Time -> 2 Seconds
• click on "Start Tests"
• as file name, enter example -> Ok
• find your data at ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Iometer.org/Iometer 2006.07.27/example.csv

TroubleShooting

dynamo prints debugging output that is quite usable and understandable.

Usability Problems

• what is a worker? Why do you need more than one? This could be a lot clearer by a simple tooltip.
• why do you delete a worker by clicking on "Disconnect Selected Worker or Manager"
• what is a manager? Why do I need to know?