Short:        Stress tests disks and file systems
Author:       Piotr Drapich
Uploader:     Piotr Drapich <docent union org pl>
Type:         disk/misc
Version:      1.2
Architecture: m68k-amigaos
Distribution: Aminet

                           FileSystemsStressTest
                    Copyright 2023-2024 by Union Systems
                         Developed by Piotr Drapich
                         
                         web page: www.union.pl/fsst
                        email support: fsst@union.pl
 
FileSystemStressTest is a tool that was created primarily to help in pfs3aio
filesystem development as a stress test suite. It can also be used to detect 
and diagnose software or hardware issues that result in file content corruption,
such as incorrect MaxTransfer settings, faulty drivers, disks or controllers.
Finally, FileSystemStressTest can also be used to clear sensitive data from disks.
  
FileSystemStressTest generates test files in the specified path, customized 
with given parameters and verifies their content by calculating and comparing 
hashes of each generated file before and after saving it to disk.
Test files have randomly generated content, initialized with specified seed and 
they will take up a specified amount of disk space, with randomly generated 
file sizes between the specified minimal and maximal values. Created test files
are removed after verification unless option -k is used. Generated test files 
that failed validation are renamed to have the suffix "_failed".

If option -% is specified, FileSystemStressTest can also simulate file
operations performed by an application. The given percentage of generated test
files will be randomly selected for deletion, then regenerated and validated. 
The size of each regenerated file will be kept within specified range so the
total size of regenerated files will be the same as the total size of all
removed files.
FileSystemStressTest can be set to perform multiple iterations of the process, 
described above.

FileSystemStressTest features:
- configurable destination path, where all files will be generated
- configurable filename prefix, so multiple instances of FileSystemStressTest
  can generate and validate files in the same directory
- configurable total volume of files to generate
- configurable minimum and maximum size of a single file. The actual file
  size will be randomly generated to be between these two values
- configurable initial random generator seed, used to generate file contents
- configurable work buffer size, used to generate and validate files
- option to keep generated files in the destination path
- configurable verbose level
- configurable number of iterations

New in version 1.2:
- added a new option to stop execution on first validation error encountered.
- generated files that failed validation are renamed to have the suffix "_failed"
- added a new parameter to -k option to allow keeping only files that failed 
  verification
- improved i/o error reporting to include error description
Bugs, fixed in version 1.2
- when option -s was not specified, the initial amount of space to be filled
  wasnt properly initialized to default value. As a result, no files were generated.
- specifying a path, containing only device name without the directory could 
  cause invalid filename path to be used for file generation.


See ReadMe.txt for detailed information on parameters, usage and examples.