From: Ben Woodard The kernel's representation of the disk statistics uses the type unsigned which is 32b on both 32b and 64b platforms. Unfortunately, most system tools that work with these numbers that are exported in /proc/diskstats including iostat read these numbers into unsigned longs. This works fine on 32b platforms and when the number of IO transactions are small on 64b platforms. However, when the numbers wrap on 64b platforms & you read the numbers into unsigned longs, and compare the numbers to previous readings, then you get an unsigned representation of a negative number. This looks like a very large 64b number & gives you bizarre readouts in iostat: ilc4: Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rsec/s wsec/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util ilc4: sda 5.50 0.00 143.96 0.00 307496983987862656.00 0.00 153748491993931328.00 0.00 2136028725038430.00 7.94 55.12 5.59 80.42 Though fixing iostat in user space is possible, and a quick survey indicates that several other similar tools also use unsigned longs when processing /proc/diskstats. Therefore, it seems like a better approach would be to extend the length of the disk_stats structure on 64b architectures to 64b. The following patch does that. It should not affect the operation on 32b platforms. Signed-off-by: Ben Woodard Cc: Jens Axboe Cc: Rick Lindsley Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- block/genhd.c | 6 +++--- include/linux/genhd.h | 12 ++++++------ 2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff -puN block/genhd.c~block-layer-increase-size-of-disk-stat block/genhd.c --- devel/block/genhd.c~block-layer-increase-size-of-disk-stat 2006-03-09 21:03:44.000000000 -0800 +++ devel-akpm/block/genhd.c 2006-03-09 21:03:44.000000000 -0800 @@ -453,8 +453,8 @@ static ssize_t disk_stats_read(struct ge disk_round_stats(disk); preempt_enable(); return sprintf(page, - "%8u %8u %8llu %8u " - "%8u %8u %8llu %8u " + "%8lu %8lu %8llu %8u " + "%8lu %8lu %8llu %8u " "%8u %8u %8u" "\n", disk_stat_read(disk, ios[READ]), @@ -648,7 +648,7 @@ static int diskstats_show(struct seq_fil preempt_disable(); disk_round_stats(gp); preempt_enable(); - seq_printf(s, "%4d %4d %s %u %u %llu %u %u %u %llu %u %u %u %u\n", + seq_printf(s, "%4d %4d %s %lu %lu %llu %u %lu %lu %llu %u %u %u %u\n", gp->major, n + gp->first_minor, disk_name(gp, n, buf), disk_stat_read(gp, ios[0]), disk_stat_read(gp, merges[0]), (unsigned long long)disk_stat_read(gp, sectors[0]), diff -puN include/linux/genhd.h~block-layer-increase-size-of-disk-stat include/linux/genhd.h --- devel/include/linux/genhd.h~block-layer-increase-size-of-disk-stat 2006-03-09 21:03:44.000000000 -0800 +++ devel-akpm/include/linux/genhd.h 2006-03-09 21:03:44.000000000 -0800 @@ -89,12 +89,12 @@ struct hd_struct { #define GENHD_FL_SUPPRESS_PARTITION_INFO 32 struct disk_stats { - unsigned sectors[2]; /* READs and WRITEs */ - unsigned ios[2]; - unsigned merges[2]; - unsigned ticks[2]; - unsigned io_ticks; - unsigned time_in_queue; + unsigned long sectors[2]; /* READs and WRITEs */ + unsigned long ios[2]; + unsigned long merges[2]; + unsigned long ticks[2]; + unsigned long io_ticks; + unsigned long time_in_queue; }; struct gendisk { _