fio: uses the opposite symbol for kibibytes/kilobytes (Kb/KiB) than ISO 80000-1

[Martin Steigerwald <martin.steigerwald@teamix.de>]

I bcc´ed Debian bug report for this initial mail so it receives a record that 
I forwarded this issue upstream.


Hello Jens,

I got this bug report for fio Debian package:

fio: uses the opposite symbol for kibibytes/kilobytes (Kb/KiB) than ISO 80000-1
https://bugs.debian.org/872321

Its right. Completely right. The current behavior of fio is broken.

But if I choose to divert from upstream default, I break *all included 
examples* unless I patch them up to and I risk bug reports "my script broke 
cause you decided to divert from upstream default behavior". Additionally 
currently it seems to me that I have to patch fio source code, unless fio 
supports a global configuration file in /etc, which, I believe, it does not.

What do you suggest me to do?

I am currently pondering the following options:

- Adding a warning note to NEWS.Debian and README.Debian that at least users 
who have apt-listchanges installed will see.

- Add a debconf configuration option aka "Yes, be correct and break all 
scripts", "No, let me stay compatible with upstream". But that wouldn´t 
possible anyway unless there is a global configuration file for fio.

None of these options sound appealing to me.


I really think this issue needs to be dealt with upstream, but I honestly do 
not know how either. But just staying with the broken behavior for eternity 
does not seem right to me. I think the move to fio 3 would have been an 
opportunity, but thats gone.

I wonder about the following compromize:

- blocksize=4k => KiB, 4096
- blocksize=4kb => KB, 4000
- blocksize=4kib => KiB, 4096

This at least won´t break existing scripts unless they used kib, gib and so 
on, I think.

And it would at least fix:

% fio --name=rand-read --bs=4k --size=1GiB --iodepth=64 --runtime=10 --
rw=randread
[…]
rand-read: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 953MiB)
[…]

which is just as broken as it can become. Seriously, 1 GiB is not 953 MiB. 
Period.


Even if thats an uncomfortable issue to deal with, I honestly don´t really see 
it as my responsibility as a package maintainer to fix up broken upstream 
behavior and probably receive the blame for doing so. If you choose to stay 
with the current behavior I may at least add a note in NEWS.Debian and 
README.Debian about the broken behavior tough.

Thanks,

-- 
Martin Steigerwald  | Trainer

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