Running DiskSim 4.0 On 64-Bit Ubuntu

DiskSim is a disk simulation software used for I/O analysis research. It is used as a research tool instead of a commercial tool, and hence requires some tweaking to run on your system.

This is a guide to installing and running DiskSim 4.0 on 64-bit Ubuntu machines. 64-bit machines require a patch, as DiskSim is originally intended for 32-bit machines. Also, some changes need to be made to certain Makefiles. Without making the changes, the compilation of the DiskSim code fails.

Firstly, download the 64-bit patched code for DiskSim 4.0 as a zip file from the following GitHub repository: DiskSim 4.0

Unzip the contents into any directory. For convenience, use the user home folder (as has been done in the following example for the rest of this post).

Now, cd into the directory disksim-4-0-x64-master from the terminal. When you run ls, you should see a list of folders such as diskmodel, doc, etc.

The libddbg, libparam, and diskmodel directories require no changes to be compiled correctly. However, memsmodel and src directories will require a few modifications to work correctly. So, run the following commands in sequence:

cd libddbg

make

cd ../libparam

make

cd ../diskmodel

make

cd ../memsmodel

gedit Makefile

The Makefile in the memsmodel directory needs to be edited slightly.

Search for the line:

LDFLAGS = -lm -L.

and replace it with

LDFLAGS = -L. -lm

Also, search for the following line (it will be below mems_seektest)

$(CC) -o $@ mems_seektest.o $(LDFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -lmems_internals

and replace it with

$(CC) -o $@ mems_seektest.o $(CFLAGS) -lmems_internals $(LDFLAGS)

Save the Makefile and go back to the terminal.

You are currently in the memsmodel directory. Now run make.

Now run cd ../src to go to src directory and open Makefile using gedit Makefile, because a few more changes need to be made.

Search for the line:

LDFLAGS = -lm -L. -ldisksim $(DISKMODEL_LDFLAGS) $(MEMSMODEL_LDFLAGS) \
$(LIBPARAM_LDFLAGS) $(LIBDDBG_LDFLAGS)

and replace it with

LDFLAGS = -L. -ldisksim $(DISKMODEL_LDFLAGS) $(MEMSMODEL_LDFLAGS) \
$(LIBPARAM_LDFLAGS) $(LIBDDBG_LDFLAGS) -lm

Also, search for the line (it will be under rms)

$(CC) $< -lm -o $@

and replace it with

$(CC) $< -o $@ -lm

Save the Makefile and go back to the terminal.

You are currently in the src directory. Now run make.

The installation of DiskSim is done. To begin testing and using it, first run cd ../valid to go to the valid subdirectory.

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The following commands show how to test if DiskSim is working and to begin using it for simulations. First, to test it, (while remaining in valid subdirectory) run the following command:

./runvalid

If DiskSim has been compiled correctly, no errors will be thrown. So, DiskSim can now be used to run simulations of disks. Disk specifications are given to DiskSim in the form of a parameter file ending with ‘.parv’. The output of a simulation run is given in an output file ending with ‘.outv’.

To run DiskSim on a parameter file, the command format is as follows (NOTE: run this from ‘valid‘ subdirectory, as it contains all the parameter files, otherwise you will have to change the required paths):

../src/disksim parfile outfile tracetype tracefile synthgen

The last two keywords in the command, tracefile and synthgen, signify whether a trace file is being used to run the simulated disk, or whether the input stream is randomly synthesized and run on the disk. Hence, only one of these can be set to 1 at a time.

‘0 1’ signifies that there is no tracefile being used, and accesses are randomly synthesized. ‘tracefile.txt 0’ signifies that tracefile.txt contains the trace to be simulated and there is no randomly synthesized input.

For example:

../src/disksim 3disks.parv out1.outv ascii 0 1

The output of the simulation will be present in out1.outv.