please enable CONFIG_TASKSTATS, especially CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING

[Pasi Savolainen]

Linux kernel has very useful task IO information (reflected into /proc/self/io and other places) similar to what 'vmstat' gives.
It needs that in kernel configuration CONFIG_TASKSTATS and CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING are enabled.
In current gutsy (2.6.22.14.21) kernel they are not enabled.

There is also very handy 'iotop.py' program available at http://guichaz.free.fr/misc/

[gmayer (gunther-mayer)]

I need to second this request. Being able to view disk i/o stats per process is very important as it would greatly help newbies, advanced users and developers alike to track down what i/o hogging processes are causing their ubuntu systems to slow down. This happens more than people think, the recent spate of bugs/forum posts related to trackerd is just one example of how top/vmstat/iostat et al are useless for such a task.

People are asking for this capability all the time, see

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=646611
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=294555
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=396692

as just some examples of users screaming for this functionality. While I'm an avid Ubuntu user myself (I completely wiped my M$ Windoze partition btw) I think it's pretty sad that all other OS's have that capability built-in but ubuntu doesn't, and all it takes to fix is to turn on a simple kernel config option...

BTW, I got alerted to this by an excellent thread on linuxquestions

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-kernel-70/how-to-enable-process-io-statistics-600777/#post2963872

which mentions that the latest version of collectl also supporting the "new" i/o /proc interface (not in the repos yet, see bug# 135037)

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

yes, please! I also think it is a great option!

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad (joerlend.schinstad-deactivatedaccount)]

Yes, this is important. The question is if there is any reason for it not to be configured that way? Such functionality becomes even more important as virtualization becomes more common, I think. I/O is probably the biggest bottleneck there is atm, so you need to track down the source as quickly as possible. Having iotop available could greatly simplify this.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

2.6.24-4-generic has this feature enabled by default (just tested iotop.py and it is running)

[dahias (wengahias)]

please turn it on again ! it would be very nice to have this feature for our Serverfarm enabled because there is no good alternative to analyze and improve performance of the daily I/O Traffic caused by virtual guests.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Isn't it turned on? it works with me

[gmayer (gunther-mayer)]

It's working for me in hardy, my original post was still for gutsy. Thanks guys, it's VERY useful to see per process i/o stats now...

I think this bug should be closed now.