Polygraph v4.3.1 available

[Alex Rousskov]

Hello,

    Web Polygraph v4.3.1 is now available at
http://www.web-polygraph.org/downloads/

Compared to the last public release (v4.0.11), this version includes
many new features and improvements. Here is a brief summary:

  - SOCKS support.
  - Content-driven robots.
  - Transaction lifetime limits.
  - PGL phase script access to live transaction stats.
  - Better randomness and consistency in traffic generation models.
  - Better support for trace replay.
  - PGL-configurable custom transaction statistics.
  - IPv6, DNS, and HTTP support fixes.
  - Portability improvements and bug fixes.

Please see the change log quoted below for details.


Enjoy,

Alex.

------------ Change Log since v4.0.11 ---------------
> version 4.3.1
> 2011/03/03
> 
> 	- Better support for trace replay: Ignore Robot.origins field
> 	  for PGL Robots with foreign-only interest. Before the change,
> 	  non-empty Robot.origins field was required, even if it was
> 	  unused because the Robot has no interest other than replaying
> 	  the foreign trace.
> 
> 	- Better support for trace replay: Do not "warm up" Robots with
> 	  foreign-only interest. Before the change, many workloads
> 	  containing trace-replaying Robots could get stuck in the first
> 	  phase due to an infinite warmup. Now, foreign-only Robots do
> 	  not affect the warmup, and the first phase ends as expected.
> 
> 	- Print the corresponding workload file line and number for many
> 	  PGL-related warnings and errors.
> 
> 	- Fixed client crash on exit when Robot.accept_content_encodings
> 	  PGL field is set.
> 
> 	- Fixed generation of lifecycle-related entity parameters when
> 	  the same ObjLifeCycle object is used multiple times in the
> 	  workload. The bug resulted in unexpected entity-header (e.g.,
> 	  Last-Modified-Time and Expires) changes when the same URL was
> 	  revisited.
> 
> 	- Fix statistics recording for aborted transactions. Before the
> 	  change, non-basic (e.g. POST) aborted transactions were
> 	  recorded in the wrong category (e.g. post). Now, all aborted
> 	  transactions are recorded in the aborted category.
> 
> 	- OpenSSL 1.0 support (LP:690599).
> 
> 	- Fixed epoll(2)-related bug which could result in "Socket not
> 	  connected" and similar errors.
> 
> 	- Fixed select(2) support in SSL-related workloads.
> 
> 	- Code cleanup.
> 
> 
> version 4.3.0
> 2010/12/10
> 
> 	- Content-driven Robots support: The user may configure Robot
> 	  behavior based on Content. Real HTTP client behavior often
> 	  depends on web site and its content.  Content-driven Robots
> 	  help simulate those dependencies.
> 
> 	  All for-Robot settings in PGL Content objects are grouped
> 	  under the new Content::client_behavior field. A new PGL
> 	  ClientBehavior type is added. Assigning PGL Robot to
> 	  ClientBehavior and vice versa is supported. Once Server and
> 	  Content are selected, Content::client_behavior settings, if
> 	  any, overwrite the corresponding Robot fields.
> 
> 	  For now, the following three Robot behavior properties can be
> 	  specified on per-Content basis: req_types, req_methods, and
> 	  ranges.
> 
> 	- Considerably improved the randomness of distribution values
> 	  tied to URLs, such as response sizes. The old distributions
> 	  could have too many similar values, with too few extreme
> 	  values, especially when non-unique worlds (--unique_world no)
> 	  were used with multiple PGL Servers and table-based
> 	  distributions.
> 
> 	- Linked object blobs from traffic stream tables in report.
> 
> 	- Fixed poll(2)-related bug which could result in "Socket not
> 	  connected" or similar errors on platforms without epoll(2)
> 	  support such as Mac OS X.
> 
> 	- Multiple world support for distr_test tool: The world_count
> 	  option is intended to simulate URL-based value generation in
> 	  workloads with multiple PGL Servers, each Server being a "oid
> 	  world" for the Robot. By default, world_count is 1, and all
> 	  oids are generated from a single world. If world_count is
> 	  greater than 1, distr_test generates oids from multiple
> 	  worlds. The number of oids generated from each world is
> 	  (trials count / worlds count).
> 
> 	- Minor fixes and code cleanup.
> 
> 
> version 4.2.2
> 2010/11/05
> 
> 	- Added custom stats: The user may configure which transactions
> 	  are added to custom stats based on HTTP status code.
> 	  Configuration is done with Agent.custom_stats_scope PGL field:
> 
> 	    custom_stats_scope = ["all", "-2xx", "+30x", "+206"];
> 
> 	  If a transaction finishes before getting a reply, or there is
> 	  no HTTP status code for another reason, the transaction is not
> 	  included in the custom stats.
> 
> 	  The following custom stats are collected: custom.rep,
> 	  custom.live.rep, custom.projected.rep. Custom stats are
> 	  accessible from PGL phase scripts.
> 
> 	- Fixed PGL TblDistr to produce the same results for the same
> 	  seed. For example, if a table distribution is used for
> 	  response body sizes, the response size would stay the same
> 	  when the same URL is visited multiple times.
> 
> 	- Fixed several build and startup problems on Mac OS X.
> 
> 	- Fixed a DummyNet-related build problem on FreeBSD 8.1.
> 
> 	- Fixed IPv6 address parsing in command line arguments.
> 
> 	- Fixed segfault when parsing a PGL array or list with a
> 	  malformed item.
> 
> 	- Allow IPv6 addresses in PGL to start with '[:'.
> 
> 
> version 4.2.1
> 2010/10/14
> 
> 	- Transaction lifetime support: Allow the user to limit the
> 	  lifetime of client and server transactions via the new PGL
> 	  Agent::xact_lifetime field. A transaction aborts when its
> 	  configured lifetime expires. Aborted transactions are treated
> 	  as errors on client and server sides of the test, for now.
> 
> 	  Client transaction lifetime includes both connection slot
> 	  waiting time (if any; see Robot::open_conn_lmt) and regular
> 	  execution time. Server transaction lifetime includes both think
> 	  time (if any; see Agent::xact_think) and regular execution time.
> 
> 
> version 4.2.0
> 2010/10/08
> 
> 	- Allow PGL scripts to monitor in-flight or "live" transactions
> 	  so that they can adjust load even when many transactions get
> 	  stuck or slow down and do not immediately contribute to regular
> 	  postmortem stats.  Measure how long live transactions have
> 	  been running (live.rep.rptm) and how many response bytes they
> 	  have read (live.rep.size). Make these new stats available to
> 	  PGL scripts via the regular stats interfaces
> 	  (currentSample().live.* and currentPhase().live.*).
> 
> 	- Added projected.rep.* statistics that combines live and
> 	  finished transaction stats. Available to PGL scripts only.
> 
> 	- Treat an HTTP CONNECT response as the end of the transaction.
> 	  Collect and report stats dedicated to these new CONNECT-only
> 	  transactions. These CONNECT transactions are often rather
> 	  different from the in-tunnel transactions that follow.
> 	  Isolating them also prevents CONNECT overheads from polluting
> 	  the first in-tunnel transaction stats.
> 
> 
> version 4.1.2
> 2010/11/06
> 
> 	- Fixed PGL TblDistr to produce the same results for the same
> 	  seed. For example, if a table distribution is used for
> 	  response body sizes, the response size would stay the same
> 	  when the same URL is visited multiple times.
> 
> 	- Fixed several build and startup problems on Mac OS X.
> 
> 	- Fixed a DummyNet-related build problem on FreeBSD 8.1.
> 
> 	- Fixed IPv6 address parsing in command line arguments.
> 
> 	- Fixed segfault when parsing a PGL array or list with a
> 	  malformed item.
> 
> 	- Allow IPv6 addresses in PGL to start with '[:'.
> 
> 
> version 4.1.1
> 2010/10/07
> 
> 	- Add dump command to the cdb tool, which stores all verbatim and
> 	  link-only objects into individual files. Cdb dump accepts an
> 	  optional --as "path/prefix${name}.suffix " parameter. Default
> 	  --as value is "./cdb${name}". ${name} macros are substituted with
> 	  1,2,3,4... integers.
> 
> 	- Cdb interface has changed. Commands (add, dump, show) are passed
> 	  as options with database argument, i.e. cdb --show test.cdb.
> 
> 	- Limit PGL load and population factors value to [0%, 100%] range.
> 	  Print error and exit if begin or end factor value is greater than
> 	  100%. If a script changes factor to a negative or greater than
> 	  100% value, print warning and set the factor to 0%/100% instead.
> 
> 	- Set Recursion Desired (RD) flag for outgoing DNS queries because
> 	  some modern resolvers do not accept queries without that flag
> 	  and because we do not recursively resolve ourselves.
> 
> 	- Skip already configured network interface aliases when creating
> 	  new ones if delete_old_addrs option is false.
> 
> 	- Do not send Content-MD5 header with HTTP 206 (Partial Content)
> 	  responses. This fixes segfault and is in line with HTTPbis.
> 	  See http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/178
> 
> 	- Fix assertion during network interface alias creation.
> 
> 	- Fix errPersistButNoCLen error on client-side when multi-ranges
> 	  and persistent connections are enabled. Content-Length is not
> 	  required if message uses the media type "multipart/byteranges".
> 
> 	- Fix LP:644813: SSL issues with DNS and embedded objects.
> 
> 	- Fix address space size check for SpreadAs.
> 
> 	- Fix multiple alias range support in the aka tool.
> 
> 	- Fix compilation of the msl_test tool on Linux.
> 
> 	- Make out-of-memory handler more robust.
> 
> 	- Minor fixes and code cleanup.
> 
> 
> version 4.1.0
> 2010/05/13
> 
> 	- Support SOCKS5 proxies for HTTP, HTTPS, and passive FTP
> 	  traffic (socks_proxies and socks_prob PGL Robot fields).  No
> 	  support for Active FTP data connections yet.  "None" and basic
> 	  "username/password" SOCKS authentication methods are
> 	  supported. Chaining SOCKS and HTTP proxies is supported (the
> 	  socks_chaining_prob PGL Robot field).
> 
> 	- Extend the ipsToNames() PGL function to support a domain name
> 	  generation template with ${dashed_ip} and ${port} macros. This
> 	  change allows more flexibility in naming a large number of
> 	  server domains.
> 
> 	- Add a dynamize() PGL function that converts an array of static
> 	  domain names to dynamic names (using the supplied renewal
> 	  percentage), similar to what the dynamicName() function does
> 	  to one static name. This change allows creation of a large
> 	  number of servers, each with a unique dynamic domain name.
> 
> 	- Do not send "100 Continue" control response if we got the
> 	  entire request body already. This fix prevents POST requests
> 	  sent without waiting for 100 Continue response from getting
> 	  stuck because the client sent everything and cannot continue.
> 
> 	- Fix server freeze when "Expect: 100-continue" request headers
> 	  and body (partial or complete) is received in a single read(2)
> 	  call.
> 
> 	- Fix assertion when an HTTP client aborts transaction.
> 
> 	- Fix abort position calculation on the client side. The abort
> 	  size was set bigger than the request size, and client aborted
> 	  after the request was sent, during response reading.
>