how to get disk read/write bytes per second from /proc in programming on linux?

Question

purpose :i want to get information like iostat command can get .

I have already known that if open /proc/diskstats or /sys/block/sdX/stat there are information that :sectors read and sectors write. So if i want to get read/write bytes/s ,the following formula is right ?

read/write bytes per second:
(sectors read/write(now)-sectors read/write(last))*512 bytes/time interval

read /write operations per second :
(read/write IOs(now)+read/write merges(now)-read/write IOs(last)-read/write merges(last ))/time interval

So if i have a timer that every second control software read the information from those two files ,and then using the above formula to calculate the value .Can i get the correct answer ?

Answer 1

TLDR Sector is 512 bytes (octets; 1 sector is 512 bytes; each bytes is 8 bits; every bit is either 0 or 1, but not superposition of them).

"The standard sector size of 512 bytes for magnetic disks was established ....[dubious – discuss] " (c) wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_sector

How to check sector size for io statistics (in /proc) in linux:

Check how iostat tool works (it shows kilobyte per second when started as iostat 1) - it is part of sysstat package:

https://github.com/sysstat/sysstat/blob/master/iostat.c

 * Read stats from /proc/diskstats.
void read_diskstats_stat(int curr)
...
        /* major minor name rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge wsect wuse running use aveq */
        i = sscanf(line, "%u %u %s %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %u %u %u %u",
               &major, &minor, dev_name,
               &rd_ios, &rd_merges_or_rd_sec, &rd_sec_or_wr_ios, &rd_ticks_or_wr_sec,
               &wr_ios, &wr_merges, &wr_sec, &wr_ticks, &ios_pgr, &tot_ticks, &rq_ticks);

        if (i == 14) {
....
            sdev.rd_sectors = rd_sec_or_wr_ios;
....
            sdev.wr_sectors = wr_sec;
....

 * @fctr    Conversion factor.
...
        if (DISPLAY_KILOBYTES(flags)) {
            printf("    kB_read/s    kB_wrtn/s    kB_read    kB_wrtn\n");
            *fctr = 2;
        }
...
    /*       rrq/s wrq/s   r/s   w/s  rsec  wsec  rqsz  qusz await r_await w_await svctm %util */
    ... 4 columns skipped
    cprintf_f(4, 8, 2,
          S_VALUE(ioj->rd_sectors, ioi->rd_sectors, itv) / fctr,
          S_VALUE(ioj->wr_sectors, ioi->wr_sectors, itv) / fctr,

So, read sector count and divide by two to get kilobyte/s (seems like 1 sector read is 0.5 kb read; 2 sector read is 1 kb read and so on). We can conclude that the sector is always 512 bytes. Same is stated in the doc, isn't it?:

internet search for "/proc/diskstats" ->

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/ABI/testing/procfs-diskstats ->

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/iostats.txt "I/O statistics fields" by ricklind from usa's ibm

Field  3 -- # of sectors read
    This is the total number of sectors read successfully.

Field  7 -- # of sectors written
    This is the total number of sectors written successfully.

No info about sector size here (why?). Is the source code being the best documentation (it may be)? The writer of /proc/diskstats is in kernel sources in file block/genhd.c, function diskstats_show:

http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/block/genhd.c?v=4.4#L1149

1170                 seq_printf(seqf, "%4d %7d %s %lu %lu %lu "
1171                            "%u %lu %lu %lu %u %u %u %u\n",
...
1176                            part_stat_read(hd, sectors[READ]),
...
1180                            part_stat_read(hd, sectors[WRITE]),

Structure sectors is defined in http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/include/linux/genhd.h?v=4.4#L82

 82 struct disk_stats {
 83         unsigned long sectors[2];       /* READs and WRITEs */

It is read with part_stat_read and written with __part_stat_add

http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/include/linux/genhd.h?v=4.4#L307

Adding to the sectors counter ... is... at http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/block/blk-core.c?v=4.4#L2264

2264 void blk_account_io_completion(struct request *req, unsigned int bytes)
2265 {
2266         if (blk_do_io_stat(req)) {
2267                 const int rw = rq_data_dir(req);
2268                 struct hd_struct *part;
2269                 int cpu;
2270 
2271                 cpu = part_stat_lock();
2272                 part = req->part;
2273                 part_stat_add(cpu, part, sectors[rw], bytes >> 9);
2274                 part_stat_unlock();
2275         }
2276 }

It uses hard-coded "bytes >> 9" to compute sector size from request size in bytes (why round down??) or for human, not no-floating-point compiler, it is the same as bytes / 512.

There is also blk_rq_sectors function (unused here...) to get sector count from request, which does the same >>9 from bytes to sectors http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/include/linux/blkdev.h?v=4.4#L853

841 static inline unsigned int blk_rq_bytes(const struct request *rq)
842 {
843         return rq->__data_len;
844 }

853 static inline unsigned int blk_rq_sectors(const struct request *rq)
854 {
855         return blk_rq_bytes(rq) >> 9;
856 }

Authors of FS/VFS subsystem in Linux says in reply to https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/8/17/234 "Why is SECTOR_SIZE = 512 inside kernel ?" (2015):

 #define SECTOR_SHIFT 9

Message https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/8/17/269 by Theodore Ts'o:

It's cast in stone. There are too many places all over the kernel, especially in a huge number of file systems, which assume that the sector size is 512 bytes. So above the block layer, the sector size is always going to be 512.

This is actually better for user space programs using /proc/diskstats, since they don't need to know whether a particular underlying hardware is using 512, 4k, (or if the HDD manufacturers fantasies become true 32k or 64k) sector sizes.

For similar reason, st_blocks in struct size is always in units of 512 bytes. We don't want to force userspace to have to figure out whether the underlying file system is using 1k, 2k, or 4k. For that reason the units of st_blocks is always going to be 512 bytes, and this is hard-coded in the POSIX standard.