Use DD to Quickly Benchmark Your CPU

Use DD to Quickly Benchmark Your CPU

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Let me start by saying… this is a quick and dirty method and shouldn’t be used for precise comparisons of CPU performance. That said, it’s perfectly adequate for approximating CPU performance, especially on Cloud hosted VPSs to ensure you’re getting the horsepower that you’re being promised.

The idea here is to force your machine to perform tasks that will be computationally expensive to force your CPU to work at 100 percent and become the bottleneck for the task (rather than disk I/ O, etc.). This task will then be timed. The shorter times will generally represent faster CPU’s and longer results would indicate a slower CPU.

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CPU benchmark

The md5sum command is a tool that creates an MD5 hash of some data. We can generate some data on the fly with dd and pipe it into the md5sum tool to create a computationally expensive task. We’ll limit the data to hash and time the length of time it takes to create the hash.

Run the below to start the test. If your result completes in under 2 seconds then increase the count=1k value to a higher value, for example count=10k.

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1k | md5sum

You’ll get an output similar to the below output.

1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.38909 s, 449 MB/s
cd573cfaace07e7949bc0c46028904ff  -

There are a couple of items that you’re interested in here, and the rest can be ignored.

  • 2.38909 s is the time it took in seconds for the operation to complete. This is the number to use for comparison with other machines – lower is better.
  • 449 MB/s is the speed that the data was fabricated and push into the md5sum tool to be hashed – higher is better.

 

CPU details with cpuinfo

Linux has various nuggets of information about your system available in the proc directory on a linux root partition. You can cat various files, such as /proc/cpuinfo, to see system specifications and metrics.

/proc/cpuinfo

The output will look similar to the below output that shows a Xeon CPU running at a clock speed of 2.50GHz.

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 62
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping        : 4
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 2500.000
cache size      : 30720 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 1
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 1
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht sysca
ll nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes xsave avx
 f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm xsaveopt fsgsbase smep
bogomips        : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

 

Use A File As A Linux Block Device

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Just like when creating a SWAP file, you can create a file on a disk and present it as a block device. The block device would have a maximum file size of the backing file, and (as long as it’s not in use) be moved around like a normal file. For example, I could create a 1GB file on the filesystem and make Linux treat the file as a disk mounted in /dev/. And guess what – that’s what we’re going to do.

Create a file and filesystem to use as a block device

First off, use dd to create a 1GB file on an existing disk that we’ll use for our storage device:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/diskimage bs=1M count=1024

Then ‘format’ the file to give it the structure of a filesystem. For this example we’re going to use ext4 but you could choose any filesystem that meets your needs.

mkfs.ext4 /root/diskimage

You’ll be promoted with Proceed anyway?. Type y and press return to proceed with the process.

mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
/root/diskimage is not a block special device.

Proceed anyway? (y,n) y

Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
65536 inodes, 262144 blocks
13107 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=268435456
8 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Mounting a loop device

Before mounting the file we need to check that there is a free /dev/loopX loopback device that we can use to represent our new block device.

Run the below command, and if there is any output then check if it’s one of your loop devices, which will more than likely reference /dev/loop as the mounted device. If you do have a reference to our loop device then see the below section on Unmounting a loop device, or choose a number higher than the highest listed loop device, for example: usually there are several loop devices, starting with loop0 and going up in value to loop1, loop2, and so on.

cat /proc/mounts | grep /dev/loop

Once you have the file that you’d like to mount and a free loop device then you can go ahead and mount the file as a block device. You have two options:

  1. Mount the file as a block device only
  2. Mount the file as a block device and mount the filesystem of it on a local mount point (eg. /mnt/mymountpoint).

For option 1; to only mount the file as a device in /dev/, run the below command and change /root/diskimage to the path of the file you’d like to mount. loop0 can also be incremented as explained above.

losetup /dev/loop0 /root/diskimage

If you’d like this to be remounted after a machine reboot then add the above line to the rc.local file.

vi /etc/rc.local

And add:

losetup /dev/loop0 /root/diskimage

 

For option 2; to mount the file and the filesystem on it, use the mount command. You must have already created the mount point locally before running the command, as you would when mounting a disk or NFS share.

mkdir /mnt/mymountpoint

Then run the mount command and specify the loop device, the path of the file and the path to mount the filesystem on:

mount -o loop=/dev/loop0 /root/diskimage /mnt/mymountpoint

To check the file has been mounted you can use the df command:

df -h | grep mymountpoint
/dev/loop0  976M  1.3M  924M  1% /mnt/mymountpoint

Unmounting a loop device

If you’ve mounted the filesystem on the block device using the mount command then make sure it’s unmounted before proceeding.

umount /mnt/mymountpoint

To then free the loop0 device (or which ever loop device you’ve used) you’ll need the losetup command with the d switch.

losetup -d /dev/loop0

 

dd Cheat Sheet

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dd is one of the most versatile IO tools available for Linux. It’s used in a variety of ways ranging from Disk Benchmarking through to creating SWAP files and copying downloaded disk images to physical disks.

dd takes the following common switches:

  • if is the input file name and location.
  • of is the name and location of the output file.
  • bs is the block size that will be used to read and/ or write the file. Increasing this can help with performance  or dictate how much data will be read or written.
  • count is the number of blocks that will be used.
  • seek is the number of blocks on the output file that will be skipped before writing any data.
  • skip is the number of blocks that will be skipped on the input file before starting to read data.
  • conv is a comma separated list of additional parameters that can be used. See the man dd for more information.

The below headings will list a few example uses of dd in a typical Linux environment.

Backup disk partition with dd

You can use dd to copy an entire disk partition to a virtual disk file. This can be useful for creating a backup or to clone the disk to another machine.

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=~/localdisk_sda1.img

You can use this method to read a CD-ROM, USB drive or Flash disk to a file in the same way – just make sure the device is inserted and point the if= part of the dd command to the relevant /dev/ device.

You could also compress the image as part of the process with gzip.

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > ~/localdisk_sda1.img.gz

Restore disk partition with dd

Similar to the above command, you can use dd to replace a disk’s partition with a virtual disk file.

dd if=~/localdisk_sda1.img of=/dev/sda1

If you compressed the image then you can decompress it first all in one go:

gunzip -c ~/localdisk_sda1.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sda1

Create a fixed size file with dd

You can create a fixed size file with DD that will be created in the location you specify.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/test bs=1024 count=1

This will create a file in /root/test of 1024 bytes in size. Increase either bs or count to change the size of the file. The resulting size will be bs * count. You can also use shorhand sizes such as K, M and G with bs, for example bs=1G,

dd if=/dev/zero of=upload_test bs=file_size count=1

Create a SWAP file with dd

dd can be used to create a SWAP file that can be used as a SWAP device by your computer. This is often needed with smaller instances on Cloud providers such as AWS.

The starting point is the same as the above command to create a file with the size that you’d like to use for swap. See my other blog post for more info.

Split a file with dd

dd can be used to read just part of a file, given offset and length coordinates. The below example will skip the first 100 bytes of the file and output the proceeding 10 bytes (byte 101 – 111).

dd if=filetosplit of=partfile bs=1 count=10 skip=100

You could repeat this process to split a large file into multiple smaller files, to be able to email it for example.

dd if=filetosplit of=partfile1 bs=1 count=100
dd if=filetosplit of=partfile2 bs=1 count=100 skip=100
dd if=filetosplit of=partfile3 bs=1 count=100 skip=200

Merge multiple files with dd

You can merge multiple files into a single file with dd. Following on from the above split example, the below will rejoin the 3 file parts into a single file.

dd if=partfile1 of=joinedfile bs=1 count=100
dd if=partfile2 of=joinedfile bs=1 count=100 seek=100
dd if=partfile3 of=joinedfile bs=1 count=100 seek=200

Convert text to lower case with dd

You can use the conv switch with dd to transform ascii text from upper case to lower case and visa-versa. Using lcase and ucase in the conv switch will instruct dd to convert the text as it’s written.

The below example will convert all characters in the filetoconvert.txt. file to lower case.

dd if=filetoconvert.txt of=convertedfile.txt conv=lcase

 

Benchmark disk IO with DD and Bonnie++

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Benchmarking disk or file system IO performance can be tricky at best. The problem is that modern file systems leverage various techniques to ensure that the best performance is achieved such as caching files in RAM. This means that unless you circumvent the disk cache, your reported speeds will be reporting how quickly the files can be read from memory.

In this example, I’ll cover benchmarking a Linux file system using two methods; dd for the easy route, and bonnie++ for a more comprehensive test.

dd

Write

You can use dd to create a large file as quickly as possible to see how long it takes. It’s a very basic test and not very customisable however it will give you a sense of the performance of the file system. You must make sure this file is larger than the amount of RAM you have on your system to avoid the whole file being cached in memory.

It’s usually installed out-of-the-box with most Linux file systems which makes it an ideal tool in locked-down environments or environments where it’s tricky to get packages installed onto. Use the below command substituting [PATH] with the filesystem path to test, [BLOCK_SIZE] with the block size and [LOOPS] for the amount of blocks to write.

time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=[PATH] bs=[BLOCK_SIZE]k count=[LOOPS] && sync"

A break down of the command is as follows:

  • time – times the overall process from start to finish
  • of= this is the path which you would like to test. The path must be read/ writable.
  • bs= is the block size to use. If you have a specific load which you are testing for, make this value mirror the write size which you would expect.
  • sync – forces the process to write the entire file to disk before completing. Note, that dd will return before completing but the time command will not, therefore the time output will include the sync to disk.

The below example uses a 4K block size and loops 2000000 times. The resulting write size will be around 7.6GB.

time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/mount1/test.tmp bs=4k count=2000000 && sync"
2000000+0 records in
2000000+0 records out
8192000000 bytes transferred in 159.062003 secs (51501929 bytes/sec)
real 2m41.618s
user 0m0.630s
sys 0m14.998s

Now, let’s do the math. dd tells us how many bytes were written, and the time command tells us how long it took – use the real output at the bottom of the output. Use the formula BYTES / SECONDS. For these larger tests, convert bytes to KB or MB to make more sensible numbers.

(8192000000 / 1024 / 1024) / ((2 * 60) + 41.618)

Bytes converted to MB / (2 minutes + 41.618 seconds)

This gives us an average of 48.34 megabytes per second over the duration of the test.

Read

We can also use dd to test the read speed of a disk by reading the file we created and timing the process. Before we do that, we need to flush the file cache by writing another file which is about the size of the RAM installed on the test system. If we don’t do this, the file we just created will be partially in RAM and therefore the read test will not be completely read from disk.

Create a file using dd which is about the same size as the RAM installed on the system. The below assumes 2GB of RAM is installed. You can check how much RAM is installed with free.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/mount1/clearcache.tmp bs=4k count=524288

Now for the read test of our original file.

time sh -c "dd if=/mnt/mount1/test.tmp of=/dev/null bs=4k"

And process the time result the same was as when writing.

Bonnie++

Bonnie++ is a small utility with the purpose of benchmarking file system IO performance. It’s commonly available in Linux repositories or available from source from the home page.

On Debian/ Ubuntu based systems, use the apt-get command.

apt-get install bonnie++

Just like with DD, we need to minimise the effect of file caching and therefore the tests should be performed on datasets larger than the amount of RAM you have on the test system. Some people suggest that you should use datasets up to 20 times the amount of RAM, others suggest twice the amount of RAM. Whichever you use, always use the same dataset size for all tests performed to ensure the results are comparable.

There are many commands which can be used with bonnie++, too many to cover here so let’s look at some of the common ones.

  • -d – is used to specify the file system directory to use to benchmark.
  • -u – is used to run a a particular user. This is best used if you run the program as root. This is the UID or the name.
  • -g – is used to run as a particular group. This is the GID or the name.
  • -r – is used to specify the amount of RAM in MB the system has installed. This is total RAM, and not free RAM. Use free -m to find out how much RAM is on your system.
  • -b – removes write buffering and performs a sync at the end of each bonnie++ operation.
  • -s – specifies the dataset size to use for the IO test in MB.
  • -n – is the number of files to use for the create files test.
  • -m – this adds a label to the output so that you can understand what the test was at a later date.
  • -x n – is used to repeat the tests n times. Change n to the number of how many times to run the tests.

bonnie++ performs multiple tests, depending on the arguments used, and does not display much until the tests are complete. When the tests complete, two outputs are visible. The bottom line is not readable (unless you really know what you are doing) however above that is a table based output of the results of the tests performed.

Let’s start with a basic test, telling bonnie++ where to test and how much RAM is installed, 2GB in this example. bonnie++ will then use a dataset twice the size of the RAM for tests. As I am running as root, I am specifying a user name.

bonnie++ -d /tmp -r 2048 -u james

bonnie++ will take a few minutes, depending on the speed of your disks and return with something similar to the output below.

Using uid:1000, gid:1000.
Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
ubuntu 4G 786 99 17094 3 15431 3 4662 91 37881 4 548.4 17
Latency 16569us 15704ms 2485ms 51815us 491ms 261ms
Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
ubuntu -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
 files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
 16 142 0 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency 291us 400us 710us 382us 42us 787us
1.96,1.96,ubuntu,1,1378913658,4G,,786,99,17094,3,15431,3,4662,91,37881,4,548.4,17,16,,,,,142,0,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,16569us,15704ms,2485ms,51815us,491ms,261ms,291us,400us,710us,382us,42us,787us

The output shows quite a few statistics, but it’s actually quite straight forward once you understand the format. First, discard the bottom line (or three lines in the above output) as this is the results separated by a comma. Some scripts and graphing applications understand these results but it’s not so easy for humans. The top few lines are just the tests which bonnie++ performs and again, can be discarded.

Of cause, all the output of bonnie++ is useful in some context however we are just going to concentrate on random read/ write, reading a block and writing a block. This boils down to this section:

Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
ubuntu 4G 786 99 17094 3 15431 3 4662 91 37881 4 548.4 17
Latency 16569us 15704ms 2485ms 51815us 491ms 261ms

The above output is not the easiest output to understand due to the character spacing but you should be able to follow it, just. The below points are what we are interested in, for this example, and should give you a basic understanding of what to look for and why.

  • ubuntu is the machine name. If you specified -m some_test_info this would change to some_test_info.
  • 4GB is the total size of the dataset. As we didn’t specify -s, a default of RAM x 2 is used.
  • 17094 shows the speed in KB/s which the dataset was written. This, and the next three points are all sequential reads – that is reading more than one data block.
  • 15431 is the speed at which a file is read and then written and flushed to the disk.
  • 37881 is the speed the dataset is read.
  • 548.4 shows the number of blocks which bonnie++ can seek to per second.
  • Latency number correspond with the above operations – this is the full round-trip time it takes for bonnie++ to perform the operations.

Anything showing multiple +++ is because the test could not be ran with reasonable assurance on the results because they completed too quickly. Increase -n to use more files in the operation and see the results.

bonnie++ can do much more and, even out of the box, show much more but this will give you some basic figures to understand and compare. Remember, always perform tests on datasets larger than the RAM you have installed, multiple times over the day, to reduce the chance of other processes interfering with the results.

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