Re: Bug#949307: ITP: disk-filltest -- Simple Tool to Detect Bad Disks by Filling with Random Data

[Timo Bingmann]

On 21/01/2020 12.40, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 06:30:01PM +0100, Sudip Mukherjee wrote:
>> The simple tool disk-filltest can help, together with S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, 
>> to
>> check disks periodically and thus be forewarned about coming failures. The
>> function of disk-filltest is simple:
>>
>> * Write files random- to the current directory until the disk is 
>> full.
> 
> How does this compare to f3read and f3write, from the "f3" package?

Very good question. And the answer is simplicity.

f3 is targeted at detected "fake" flash disks which pretend to be larger
than they are. There is a lot of code around that, handling file system
and detecting flash disks and stuff like that. Yes, f3 too writes a
random sequence and checks it. But then tries to locate the maximum
valid size and so on.

f3 is 3992 lines of C code according to my loc-counting tool.
disk-filltest is 380 lines and does not try to do anything fancy.

Best,
Timo

Request for packaging two simple tools: disk-filltest and digup

[Timo Bingmann]

Dear Debian People,

I wonder if it would be possible to package and include two simple but
extremely useful command line programs in Debian? I wrote them 10 years
and 7 years ago; they have stood the test of time and remain useful.

First is

disk-filltest - A Simple Tool to Detect Bad Disks by Filling with Random
Data
https://panthema.net/2013/disk-filltest/

It is a one-file .c program which fills a path with random data and then
rereads the files to check that the random sequence was correctly
stored. I still use it to check storage media for errors.

and second is

digup - A Digest Updating Tool
https://panthema.net/2009/digup/

digup is a console tool to update md5sum or shasum digest files. It will
read existing digest files, check the current directory for new,
updated, modified, renamed or deleted files and query the user with a
summary of changes. After reviewing the updates, they can be written
back to the digest file.

Both are highly portable, have no library dependencies, and are trivial
to compile (first only a Makefile, second a autoconf/automake setup).

If someone would be interested in packaging them, please ping me back.

Best Regards,
Timo Bingmann