iogen

Iogen is an incredibly useful I/O generator software that can be used to test filesystems, drivers, firmware, and other hardware devices. It achieves this by forking child processes that each run a mix of reads and writes, generating heavily fragmented files to push the hardware to its limits.

While it is not intended as a performance measuring tool, iogen is perfect for recreating worst-case scenarios which can help identify potential problems or limitations. Developed and tested on OpenBSD 3.8-current Dec 6 2005 and with POSIX compliance, iogen should work on all well-behaving UNIX OSes.

If you wish to port this software to another OS, simply send a diff and if it's deemed suitable, it will be merged with the original code. Keep in mind, however, that no additional makefiles will be generated besides the example included in the current version. The official Makefile is part of the OpenBSD ports tree and is non-portable.

In case you're wondering what's new in the latest update: the Linux makefile has been fixed, ensuring that iogen runs smoothly across all compatible OSes. Lastly, it must be noted that any makefiles or diffs published on this website are only under a BSD license.