Request for feedback on pre-release netperf 2.4.3

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After a bit of a delay, I believe I am once again ready to release
another version of netperf - netperf 2.4.3. There are a number of
changes in 2.4.3 over and beyond 2.4.2.

Apart from the changes listed below, I have also made some moderate
updates to the manual and I would like your feedback on that. You can
take your pick of format from the files at:

http://www.netperf.org/svn/netperf2/trunk/doc/

Here is an excerpt from the Release_Notes:

*) A new global option - -N - has been added. When specified, this
option will tell netperf to not bother to try to establish a
control connection with a remote netserver. Instead, netperf will
only attempt to make a data connection to the remote system. By
default, this will be to the "discard" service for a "STREAM" or
"SENDFILE" test, the "echo" service for a "RR" test and the
"chargen" service for a "MAERTS" test. Any "remote" settings are
changed to reflect their being unused in the test, and a "no
control" tag is added to the test banner when -N is specified.

This still needs to be propagated to other test files - at least
for those for which it may make sense.

*) The tests in nettest_bsd.c have been altered to not actually take
timestamps and deltas in --enable-histogram unless the verbosity
level has been set to actually display a histogram. This reduces
the overhead measurably, even on systems with "fast" time calls,
which _may_ mean that a future release of netperf may have
histogram support enabled by default.

This still needs to be propagated to other test files. Patches
from the community would be most welcome

*) Eliminate a bogus fprintf from the signal catching routine which
was being executed when both intervals and demo mode were active at
the same time.

*) The nettest_ipv6.* files are no longer included in the source
tar/zip file. IPv6 functionality has been subsumed into the
nettest_bsd.* files for some time now. Paranoia keeps the Netperf
Contributing Editor from removing it from the top of trunk of the
source repository until after he can do a bit more reading about
subversion

*) Use a higher resolution "time" source for HISTOGRAM support under
Windows, courtesy of Spencer Frink. Prior to this it had no better
than 10ms granularity which could lead to some rather strange
looking results

*) A bug fix reporting recv_size rather than send_size in TCP_MAERTS
when CPU utilization was requested.

*) A bug fix for buffer filling from a file to properly advance the
buffer pointer when the file is smaller than the send buffer.

*) Enable certain UDP tests which previously used unconnected sockets
to use connected sockets. Courtesy of Shilpi Agarwal.

*) The OSX CPU utilization code actually gets put into the tarball in
a make dist now

*) The check to make sure that getaddrinfo returned ai_protocol and/or
ai_socktype's matching that which we requested is done for all socket
and/or protocol types and a warning is emitted if it returns any which
do not match.

*) The linux CPU affinity code has been made capable of binding to
CPU's >=32 on a 32-bit compilation and >=64 on a 64-bit
compilation.

*) More complete closing/redirecting of stdin/stdout/stderr/where in
netserver to make it easier to launch netserver at the far-end of a
remote shell. Courtesy of Hans Blom.

*) Sendfile changes for Solaris courtesy of Andrew Gallatin.

*) "spec" file support to generate RPMs courtesy of Martin Brown

If you can grab the bits with your subversion client from the repository:

http://www.netperf.org/svn/netperf2/trunk/

and kick the tires a bit on your platform(s) of choice and let me know
how it goes, I would appreciate it. If you do not have a subversion
client, please contact me directly, and I will send you either a tar
or zip file with the sources contained therein.

happy benchmarking,

rick jones
--
The computing industry isn't as much a game of "Follow The Leader" as
it is one of "Ring Around the Rosy" or perhaps "Duck Duck Goose."
- Rick Jones
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

On 2007-02-09 20:31:26 -0600, Rick Jones <(E-Mail Removed)> said:

> [ A Followup-to: header has been added requesting that followups to
> this post be directed to comp.benchmarks. Please make sure your
> newsreader honors it.

Just wondering about proper operation regarding the Followup-to header.
Is the news client supposed to reply *only* to comp.benchmarks? As
you can see by my reply, my news client includes all of the above.

--
JR

Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2007-02-09 20:31:26 -0600, Rick Jones <(E-Mail Removed)> said:
>
>> [ A Followup-to: header has been added requesting that followups to
>> this post be directed to comp.benchmarks. Please make sure your
>> newsreader honors it.
>
>
> Just wondering about proper operation regarding the Followup-to header.
> Is the news client supposed to reply *only* to comp.benchmarks?

Yes.

--
Ian Collins.

On 2007-02-09 22:37:50 -0600, Ian Collins <ian-(E-Mail Removed)> said:

> Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2007-02-09 20:31:26 -0600, Rick Jones <(E-Mail Removed)> said:
>>
>>> [ A Followup-to: header has been added requesting that followups to
>>> this post be directed to comp.benchmarks. Please make sure your
>>> newsreader honors it.
>>
>> Just wondering about proper operation regarding the Followup-to header.
>> Is the news client supposed to reply *only* to comp.benchmarks?
>
> Yes.

Looks like I have a bug report to make, then. Thanks!

--
JR