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

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

Send again without that long and misleading mail signature. Sorry for noise.


Hello Jens, hello fio community.

Anything? Anything at all?

If not, I go by a NEWS.Debian entry that explains the issue, but otherwise I 
tend to leave intact the broken, but wide-spread default behavior.

Thanks,
Martin

Martin Steigerwald - 28.08.17, 11:06:
> 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,