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datafile statistics and verification

Metakit datafiles are failsafe, in that failures at any point, even power failures, will not lead to damaged datafiles. This is due to a technique called "stable storage".

Still, there may be cases when datafiles do get damaged:

• hard disk failures which actually damage block (or write incomplete ones)
• stray writes in the app damaging buffered changes which MK writes to file
• opening files for writing more than once
• file server caching problems
• bugs in the Metakit code
• bugs in lower system levels (compiler, libraries, o/s)

The Mkstats utility helps verify datafiles, in that it checks the most likely form of damage: allocated/free space use in the file which are incorrect and have overlap. Note that there is no free space list on file: free space is defined implicitly as the space which is not in use. This means free space need never be reclaimed - its reuse is automatic. The one error is if byte ranges used on file show any overlap.

As a side benefit, "mkstats" also displays some basic file usage statistics.

Mkstats currently works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (x86). It's packaged as a Starkit and requires Tclkit to run.

Windows

• download mkstats.kit
• download Tclkit for Windows (cmdline), and rename it to "tclkitsh.exe"
• run mkstats by typing:
  tclkitsh mkstats.kit <suspectdatafile>
• as a side effect, a small "mku.exe" utility needed by mkstats will be created

Linux and mac os x

• download mkstats.kit
• download Tclkit for Linux or Mac OS X, unpack/rename to "tclkit", and type:
  chmod +x tclkit
• run mkstats by typing:
  ./tclkit mkstats.kit <suspectdatafile>
• as a side effect, a small "mku.linux" (resp. "mku.macosx") utility needed by mkstats will be created

Mkstats can deal with datafiles created on any platform.

Note: please remove the mku.* utility created by mkstats when updating, to make sure the latest versions is used after the update.

latest news

• Version ID: 2004/05/16 09:11:43 22552-34246 - download.
• mku.linux: new build, to get rid of glibc 2.3 dep
• mkstats.tcl: adjusted to also accept new MKC-based output of mku.linux

See the feedback forum in case of trouble.

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