Iometer

IOMeter running under WinE (click to enlarge).

IOMeter is a disk I/O benchmark. You can measure e.g. your harddisk's speed based on block size, random read, sequential write and so on.

Here I give an example how to make IOMeter run on Linux. I have been trying to do this for 7 years. The problem is that the GUI ("iometer") only exists for Windows while the Linux packages only contain the backend ("dynamo"). To get it going I used WinE 1.3.32 on SUSE Linux 11.4 x64 and IOMeter 2006.07.27 for Windows. I did not use the source code nor the Linux binaries.

• Set up wine repository

yast2 -> Software -> Repositories -> Add -> Community Repositories -> wine snapshot

• 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 the iometer suite

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

See also

• tutorials