25.12.15.6 File I/O Summary Tables

The Performance Schema maintains file I/O summary tables that aggregate information about I/O operations.

Example file I/O event summary information:

mysql> SELECT * FROM performance_schema.file_summary_by_event_name\G
...
*************************** 2. row ***************************
               EVENT_NAME: wait/io/file/sql/binlog
               COUNT_STAR: 31
           SUM_TIMER_WAIT: 8243784888
           MIN_TIMER_WAIT: 0
           AVG_TIMER_WAIT: 265928484
           MAX_TIMER_WAIT: 6490658832
...
mysql> SELECT * FROM performance_schema.file_summary_by_instance\G
...
*************************** 2. row ***************************
                FILE_NAME: /var/mysql/share/english/errmsg.sys
               EVENT_NAME: wait/io/file/sql/ERRMSG
               EVENT_NAME: wait/io/file/sql/ERRMSG
    OBJECT_INSTANCE_BEGIN: 4686193384
               COUNT_STAR: 5
           SUM_TIMER_WAIT: 13990154448
           MIN_TIMER_WAIT: 26349624
           AVG_TIMER_WAIT: 2798030607
           MAX_TIMER_WAIT: 8150662536
...

Each file I/O summary table has one or more grouping columns to indicate how the table aggregates events. Event names refer to names of event instruments in the setup_instruments table:

  • file_summary_by_event_name has an EVENT_NAME column. Each row summarizes events for a given event name.

  • file_summary_by_instance has FILE_NAME, EVENT_NAME, and OBJECT_INSTANCE_BEGIN columns. Each row summarizes events for a given file and event name.

Each file I/O summary table has the following summary columns containing aggregated values. Some columns are more general and have values that are the same as the sum of the values of more fine-grained columns. In this way, aggregations at higher levels are available directly without the need for user-defined views that sum lower-level columns.

  • COUNT_STAR, SUM_TIMER_WAIT, MIN_TIMER_WAIT, AVG_TIMER_WAIT, MAX_TIMER_WAIT

    These columns aggregate all I/O operations.

  • COUNT_READ, SUM_TIMER_READ, MIN_TIMER_READ, AVG_TIMER_READ, MAX_TIMER_READ, SUM_NUMBER_OF_BYTES_READ

    These columns aggregate all read operations, including FGETS, FGETC, FREAD, and READ.

  • COUNT_WRITE, SUM_TIMER_WRITE, MIN_TIMER_WRITE, AVG_TIMER_WRITE, MAX_TIMER_WRITE, SUM_NUMBER_OF_BYTES_WRITE

    These columns aggregate all write operations, including FPUTS, FPUTC, FPRINTF, VFPRINTF, FWRITE, and PWRITE.

  • COUNT_MISC, SUM_TIMER_MISC, MIN_TIMER_MISC, AVG_TIMER_MISC, MAX_TIMER_MISC

    These columns aggregate all other I/O operations, including CREATE, DELETE, OPEN, CLOSE, STREAM_OPEN, STREAM_CLOSE, SEEK, TELL, FLUSH, STAT, FSTAT, CHSIZE, RENAME, and SYNC. There are no byte counts for these operations.

TRUNCATE TABLE is permitted for file I/O summary tables. It resets the summary columns to zero rather than removing rows.

The MySQL server uses several techniques to avoid I/O operations by caching information read from files, so it is possible that statements you might expect to result in I/O events will not. You may be able to ensure that I/O does occur by flushing caches or restarting the server to reset its state.