filegen [-rvVS] [-f maxfilesiz] [-i interval] [-p prefix] [-s seed] [-t totalbytes] directory
filegen is a program to write files of random sizes and random content in a predictable way. The idea is to generate files for post-mortem file system analysis. filegen can also be used to verify the integrity of files it generated.
Every file written by filegen is numbered and may receive an optional prefix. By default, file number 1 will be named f0000 and composed entirely of 0-valued words, file number 2 will be named f0001 and consist of 1-valued words, and so on. A word contains sizeof(size_t) bytes. This behaviour allows misallocated file system blocks to be diagnosed quickly, and can be switched off by using option -r.
Files are written by filegen in chunks of random sizes and placed inside directory. The size of each individual chunk cannot exceed 64KB.
The options are as follows:
- -r
- Randomise the content of each file.
- -v
- Enable verbose mode.
- -V
- Verify the content of files in directory. If this option is specified, filegen does not write data.
- -S
- Call fsync(2) after writing each file.
- -f maxfilesiz
- The maximum size of each file in bytes. The default is 16MB.
- -i interval
- The interval between two consecutive writes in nanoseconds. The default is zero.
- -p prefix
- The prefix used when naming files. The default is an empty string.
- -s seed
- The seed used to initialise the sequence of pseudo-random numbers used by filegen. By default, a time-derived seed is used.
- -t totalbytes
- The total amount of bytes to be written. The default is 1GB.
One could use the script below to write 128GB worth of data in /stage using 16 concurrent processes, with random content and each file holding 128MB at most, an interval of 0.5ms between writes, and 6010 as the seed:
# cat << 'EOF' > run.sh
T=8589934592 # 8GB
F=134217728 # 128MB
S=6010 # seed
I=500000 # 0.5ms
jot -c 16 A | xargs -t -n 1 -J % -P 16 filegen $1 -r -i $I -t $T -f $F -s $S -p % /stage
EOF
Or, on Linux with bash or zsh:
# cat << 'EOF' > run.sh
T=8589934592 # 8GB
F=134217728 # 128MB
S=6010 # seed
I=500000 # 0.5ms
echo {A..P} | tr ' ' '\n' | xargs -t -n 1 -I {} -P 16 filegen $1 -r -i $I -t $T -f $F -s $S -p {} /stage
EOF
It would then be possible to dispatch the processes using:
# sh run.sh
After a simulated (or actual) outage, the files could be verified using:
# sh run.sh -V