Reference

gnop(8)

control utility for NOP GEOM class

NAME

gnop – control utility for NOP GEOM class

SYNOPSIS

gnop create [-v] [-c count_until_fail] [-d delaymsec] [-e error] [-o offset] [-p stripesize] [-P stripeoffset] [-q rdelayprob] [-r rfailprob] [-s size] [-S secsize] [-w wfailprob] [-x wdelayprob] [-z physpath] [-Z gnopname] dev ...

gnop configure [-v] [-c count_until_fail] [-d delaymsec] [-e error] [-q rdelayprob] [-r rfailprob] [-w wfailprob] [-x wdelayprob] prov ...

gnop destroy [-fv] prov ...

gnop reset [-v] prov ...

gnop [--libxo] list

gnop [--libxo] status

gnop load

gnop unload

DESCRIPTION

The gnop utility is used for setting up transparent providers on existing ones. Its main purpose is testing other GEOM classes, as it allows forced provider removal and I/O error simulation with a given probability. It also gathers statistics on the number of read, write, delete, getattr, flush, and other requests, and the number of bytes read and written. gnop can also be used as a good starting point for implementing new GEOM classes.

The first argument to gnop indicates an action to be performed:

create

Set up a transparent provider on the given devices. If the operation succeeds, the new provider should appear with name /dev/⟨dev⟩.nop. The kernel module geom_nop.ko will be loaded if it is not loaded already.

configure

Configure existing transparent provider. At the moment it is only used for changing failure probability.

destroy

Turn off the given transparent providers.

reset

Reset statistics for the given transparent providers.

list

See geom(8).

status

See geom(8).

load

See geom(8).

unload

See geom(8).

--libxo

Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different human and machine readable formats. See xo_options(7) for details on command line arguments.

Additional options:

-c count_until_fail

Specifies the number of I/O requests to allow before setting the read, write and delay failure probabilities.

-d delaymsec

Specifies the delay of the requests in milliseconds. Note that requests will be delayed before they are sent to the backing device.

-e error

Specifies the error number to return on failure.

-f

Force the removal of the specified provider.

-o offset

Where to begin on the original provider.

-p stripesize

Value of the stripesize property of the transparent provider.

-P stripeoffset

Value of the stripeoffset property of the transparent provider.

-q rdelayprob

Specifies read delay probability in percent.

-r rfailprob

Specifies read failure probability in percent.

-s size

Size of the transparent provider.

-S secsize

Sector size of the transparent provider.

-w wfailprob

Specifies write failure probability in percent.

-v

Be more verbose.

-x wdelayprob

Specifies write delay probability in percent.

-z physpath

Physical path of the transparent provider.

-Z gnopname

The name of the new provider. The suffix “.nop” will be appended to the provider name.

SYSCTL VARIABLES

The following sysctl(8) variables can be used to control the behavior of the NOP GEOM class. The default value is shown next to each variable.

kern.geom.nop.debug: 0

Debug level of the NOP GEOM class. This can be set to a number between 0 and 2 inclusive. If set to 0, minimal debug information is printed. If set to 1, basic debug information is logged along with the I/O requests that were returned as errors. If set to 2, the maximum amount of debug information is printed including all I/O requests.

EXIT STATUS

Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails.

EXAMPLES

The following example shows how to create a transparent provider for disk /dev/da0 with 50% write failure probability, and how to destroy it.

gnop create -v -w 50 da0
gnop destroy -v da0.nop

The traffic statistics for the given transparent providers can be obtained with the list command. The example below shows the number of bytes written with newfs(8):

gnop create da0
newfs /dev/da0.nop
gnop list

SEE ALSO

geom(4), xo_options(7), geom(8)

HISTORY

The gnop utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS

Pawel Jakub Dawidek ⟨[email protected]⟩

History

--libxo since FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27); -P since FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE; -Z since FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; -c since FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; -d since FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; -e since FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE; -p since FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE; -q since FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; -r since FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE; -w since FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE; -x since FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; -z since FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE.