USAGE for v5.13.3: p4verify.sh [] [-N] [-nu] [-nr] [-ns] [-nS] [-a] [-nt] [-nz] [-o BAD|MISSING] [-chunks |-paths ] [-w ] [-q ] [-Q MaxTotalPullQueueSize] [-recent] [-dlf ] [-I|-ignores ] [-Ocache] [-n] [-L ] [-v] [-d] [-D] or p4verify.sh -h|-man DESCRIPTION: This script performs a 'p4 verify' of all submitted and shelved versioned files in depots of all types except 'remote' and 'archive' type depots. If run on a replica, it schedules archive failures for transfer to the replica. OPTIONS: Specify the SDP instance. If not specified, the SDP_INSTANCE environment variable is used instead. If the instance is not defined by a parameter and SDP_INSTANCE is not defined, p4verify.sh exists immediately with an error message. -N Specify '-N' (Notify Only On Failure) to disable the default behavior which will always send a notification which includes a report of the p4 verify status. Specifying '-N' which change the behavior to only send a notification if there is an error during the p4 verify execution. Notification methods are email, AWS SNS, and PagerDuty. Details on configuration can be found in the SDP documentation. Providing the environment variable NOTIFY_ONLY_ON_FAILURE=1 is equivalent to the '-N' command line argument. -nu Specify '-nu' (No Unload) to skip verification of the singleton depot of type 'unload' (if created). The 'unload' depot is verified by default. -nr Specify '-nr' (No Regular) to skip verification of regular submitted archive files. The '-nr' option is not compatible with '-recent'. Regular submitted archive files are verified by default. -ns Specify '-ns' (No Spec Depot) to skip verification of singleton depot of type 'spec' (if created). The 'spec' depot is verified by default. -nS Specify '-nS' (No Shelves) to skip verification of shelved archive files, i.e. to skip the 'p4 verify -qS'. -a Specify '-a' (Archive Depots) to do verification of depots of type 'archive'. Depots of type 'archive' are not verified by default, as archive depots are often physically removed from the server's storage subsystem for long-term cold storage. -nt Specify the '-nt' option to avoid passing the '-t' flag to 'p4 verify' on a replica. By default, p4verify.sh detects if it is running on a replica, and if so automatically applies the '-t' flag to 'p4 verify'. That causes the replica to attempt to self-heal, as files that fail verification are scheduled for transfer from the P4TARGET server. This default behavior results in 'Transfer scheduled' messages in the log, and MISSING/BAD files are listed as 'info:' rather than 'error:'. There is no clear indication of whether or which of the scheduled transfers complete successfully, and so there may be a mix of transient/correctable and "real"/persistent transfer errors for files that are also BAD/MISSING on the master server. Specify '-nt' to ensure the log contains a list of files that currently fail a 'p4 verify' without attempting to transfer them from the master. -nz Specify '-nt' to skip the gzip of the old log file. By default, if a log with the default name or the name specified with '-L' exists at the start of processing, the old log is rotated and gzipped. With this option the old log is not zipped when rotated. -o BAD|MISSING Specify '-o MISSING' to check only whether expected archive files exist or not, skipping the checksum calculation of existing files. This results in dramatically faster, if less comprehensive, verification. This is particularly well suited when verification is being used to schedule archive file transfers of missing files on replicas. This translates into passing the '--only MISSING' option to 'p4 verify'. Specify '-o BAD' to check only for BAD revisions. This translates into passing the '--only BAD' option to 'p4 verify'. This option requires p4d to be 2021.1 or newer. For older p4d versions, this option is silently ignored. -chunks Specify the maximum amount of content by size to verify at once. If this is specified, the depot_verify_chunks.py script is used to break up depots into chunks of a given size, e.g. 100M or 4G. The parameter must be a size value valid to pass to the depot_verify_chunks.py script with the '-m' option. That is, specifying '-chunks 200M' translates to calling depot_chunks_verify.sh with '-m 200M'. This requires the perforce-p4python3 module to be installed and the python3 in the PATH must be the correct one that uses the P4 module. Using '-chunks' is likely to result in a significantlly slower overall verify operation, though chuking can make it less impactful when it runs. Using the '-chunks' option may be necessary on very large data sets, e.g. if there insufficient resources to process the largest depots. The '-recent' and '-chunks' options are mutually exclusive. The '-chunks' and '-paths' options can be used together; see the description of the '-paths' option below. Chunking logic applies only in depots of type 'stream' or 'local'. -paths Specify a file containing a list of depot paths to verify, with one line per entry. Valid entries in the file start with '//', e.g. //mydepot/main/src/... In this example, when //mydepot depot is processed, only specified paths will be verified. All other depots will be processed in full. To verify only specified paths, combine '-paths ' with '-dlf ' where the depot list file contains only 'mydepot' (per the example above). The '-recent' and '-paths' options are mutually exclusive. The '-chunks' and '-paths' options can be used together for combined effects. If both options are specified, depots that contain specified paths are chunked based on the specified paths rather than the entire depot, and other paths in that depot are not processed. Depots that do not have any specified paths listed in the are chunked at the top/depot level directory. Paths specified must be in depots of type 'stream' or 'local'. -w Specify the '-w' option, where is a positive integer indicating the number of seconds to sleep between individual calls to 'p4 verify' commands. For example, specifying '-w 300' results in a delay of 5 minutes between verify commands. This can be used with '-chunks' to inject a delay between chunked depot paths. Otherwise, the delay is injected between each depot processed. This can significantly lengthen the overall duration of 'p4verify.sh' operation, but can also spread out the resource consumption load on a server machine. If shelves are procossed (regardless of whether '-chunks' is used), the delay is injected between each individual shelved changelist, as shelved changes are verified one changelist at a time. For data sets with a large number of shelves, it may be be wise to process shelves separately from submitted files if '-w' is used, a delay value to apply between depots may be different from that applied to individual changelists. See the '-q' option for a description of how '-q' and '-w' can be used together. -q Specify the '-q' option, where is a positive integer indicating the maximum number of active pulls allowed before a 'p4 verify' command will be executed to transfer archives. The absolute maximum number of possible active pulls is affected by the number of 'startup.N' threads configured to pull archives files, and whether those threads indicate batching. The threads that pull archive files are those that configured to use the 'pull' command the '-u' option. Typically, a small number of pull threads are configured, between 2 and 10 or perhaps 20. If '-q 1' is specified, new 'p4 verify' commands will only be run when the active pull queue is quiet. Specifying a too-high value, e.g. '-q 50' if only 3 'pull -u' archive pull threads are configured, will be ineffective, as the active pull threads will never exceed 3 (let alone 50). The current active pull queue on a replica is reported by: p4 -ztag -F %replicaTransfersActive% pull -ls This option can be useful if using this p4verify.sh script to pull many or even all archives on a new replica server machine from its target server. The injected delays can give the server time to transfer archives scheduled in one call to 'p4 verify' before calling it again with the goal of avoidng overloading the pull queue. If '-w' and '-q' options are both used, the delay specified by '-w' is ignored unless the active pull queue size is greater than or equal to the specified maximum active pull queue size. The '-w' then essentially determines how frequently the 'p4 pull -ls' is run to check the active pull queue size. A reasonable set of values might be '-q 1 -w 10'. The '-q' option in mutually exclusive with '-nt'. The '-q' option in mutually exclusive with '-Q'. -Q Specify the '-Q' option, where is a positive integer indicating the maximum number of total pulls allowed before a 'p4 verify' command will be executed to transfer archives. In certain scenarios, the pull queue can become quite massive. For example, if a fresh standby replica is seeded from a checkpoint but has no archive files, and then a 'p4verify.sh' is run, the verify will schedule all files to be transferred, perhaps millions. If the pull queue gets too large, it can impact metadata replication. Setting this value may help mitigate issues related to scheduling too many archives pulls at once, by delaying scheduling new archive pulls until enough previously scheduled pulls are completed. This option can be useful in such scenarios, if this p4verify.sh script is used to pull many or even all archives on a new replica server machine from its target server. The injected delays can give the server time to transfer archives scheduled in one call to 'p4 verify' before calling it again with the goal of avoidng overloading the pull queue. If individual depots contain large numbers of files, such that a verify on a single depot will schedule too many files to be transferred at once, it may be necessary to combine this option with the '-chunks' option to avoid overloading the transfer queue. **WARNING**: If there are files that cannot be tranferred from the replica's target server, the value of '-Q' must be set to higher than that number, or an infinite loop may occur. For example, if there are 500 permanent "legacy" verify errors on the commit server from 10 years ago that have long since been abandoned, those files can never be transferred to any replica. Running p4verify.sh on the replica will cause those files to be scheduled, but as they cannot be pulled, they will land in the total pull queue. In this scenario, the value set with '-Q' must be greater than 500, or an infinite loop is possible. Specify '-Q 0' to disable checking the total pull queue. The current total pull queue on a replica is reported by: p4 -ztag -F %replicaTransfersTotal% pull -ls This option can be useful if using this p4verify.sh script to pull many or even all archives on a new replica server machine from its target server. The injected delays can give the server time to transfer archives scheduled in one call to 'p4 verify' before calling it again with the goal of avoidng overloading the pull queue. If '-w' and '-Q' options are both used, the delay specified by '-w' is ignored unless the total pull queue size is greater than or equal to the specified maximum total pull queue size. The '-w' then essentially determines how frequently the 'p4 pull -ls' is run to check the total pull queue size. A reasonable set of values might be '-q 50000 -w 10'. The '-Q' option in mutually exclusive with '-nt'. The '-Q' option in mutually exclusive with '-q'. -recent Specify that only recent changelists should be verified. The $SDP_RECENT_CHANGES_TO_VERIFY variable defines how many changelists are considered recent; the default is 200. If the default is not appropriate for your site, add "export SDP_RECENT_CHANGES_TO_VERIFY" to /p4/common/config/p4_N.vars to change the default for an instance, or to /p4/common/bin/p4_vars to change it globally. If $SDP_RECENT_CHANGES_TO_VERIFY is unset, the default is 200. When -recent is used, neither shelves nor files in the unload depot are verified. -dlf Specify a file containing a list of depots to process in the desired order. By default, all depots reported by 'p4 depots', which effectively results in depots processed in alphabetical order. This can be useful in time-sensitive situations where the order of processing can be prioritized, and/or to prevent processing certain depots. The format fo the depot list file is straighforward, one line per depot, without the '//' nor trailling /..., so a list might look like this sample: ProjA ProjB spec .swarm unload archive ProjC Blank lines and lines starting with a '#' are treated as comments and ignored. WARNING: This is not intended to be the primary method of verification, because it would be easy to forget to add new depots to the list file. If the depot list file is not readable, processing aborts. -ignores Specify the 'verify ignores' file, a file containing a series of regular expression patterns representing files or file revisions to ignore when scanning for verify errors. Errors matching the pattern will be suppressed from the output captured in the log, and will not be considered a verification error. If the '-ignores' is not specified, the default verify ignores file is: /p4/common/config/p4verify.N.ignores where 'N' is the SDP instance name. If this file exists, it is considered the 'verify ignores' file. Specify '-ignores none' to avoid processing the standard ignores file. The patterns can be specific files, specific file paths, or broader patterns (e.g. in the case of entirely abandoned depots). The file provided is passed as the '-f ' option to the 'grep' utility, and is expected to contain a series of one-line entries, each containing an expression to exclude from being considered as verify errors reported by this script. You can test your expression by first using it with grep to ensure it suppresses errors by using a command like this sample, providing an older log from this script that contains errors to be suppressed: grep -Ev -f /path/to/regex_file /path/to/old/p4verify.log If your server is case-sensitive, change that command to use '-i': grep -Evi -f /path/to/regex_file /path/to/old/p4verify.log This sample entry ignores a single file revision: //Alpha/main/docs/Expenses from February 1999.xls#3 This sample entry ignores all revisions of a single file: //Alpha/main/docs/Expenses from February 1999.xls This sample entry ignores all entries in the spec depot related to client specs: //spec/client This sample uses the MD5 checksum from the verify error, just to illustrate that this can be used as an alternative to specifying file paths: D34989BFB8D9B0FB9866C4A604A05410 This sample ignores BAD! (but not MISSING!) errors under the //Beta/main/src directory tree: //Beta/main/src/.* BAD! WARNING: Ensure that the regex file provided does NOT contain any blank lines or comments. The file should contain only tested regex patterns. This option is intended to provide a way to ignore unrecoverably lost file revisions from things like past infrastructure failures, for which search and recovery efforts have been abandoned. This option subtly changes the question answered by this script from "Are there any verify errors?" to "Are there any new verify errors, errors we don't already know about?" WARNING: This option is not intended to be incorporated into the primary method of verification, because ignoring archive errors in this script does not solve the problem at its source. Ideally, the root cause of the verify errors should be addressed by recovering lost archives, injecting replacement content, or other means. So long as verify errors remain, even if ignored by this option, users attempting to access the revisions will still see Librarian errors, and replicas will encounter errors trying to pull the missing archives. This option could increase the risk that such revisions are never dealt with. -Ocache Specify '-Ocache' to attempt a verification on a replica configured with a 'lbr.replication' replication configuration setting value of 'cache'. By default, if the 'lbr.replication' configurable is set to 'cache', this script aborts, as replication of such a depot will schedule transfers that are likely unintended. This is a safety feature. The 'cache' mode is generally used on replicas or edge servers with limited disk space. Because running a verify will cause transfers of any missing files, this could result in filling up the disk. Use of '-Ocache' is strongly discouraged unless combined with other options to ensure that only targeted paths are scheduled for transfer. -v Verbose. Show output of verify attempts, which is suppressed by default. Setting SDP_SHOW_LOG=1 in the shell environment has the same effect as -v. The default behavior of this script is to generate no terminal output, but instead to write output into a log file -- see LOGGING below. If '-v' is specified, the generated log is sent to stdout at the end of processing. This flag is not recommended for routine cron operation or for large data sets. The -chunks and -recent options are mutually exclusive. -L Specify the log file to use. The default is /p4/N/logs/p4verify.log Log rotation and old log cleanup logic does not apply to log files specified with -L. Thus, using -L is not recommended for routine scheduled operation, e.g. via crontab. DEBUGGING OPTIONS: -n No-Operation (NO_OP) mode, for debugging. Display certain commands that would be executed without executing them. When '-n' is used, commands that might take a long time to run or affect data are only displayed. Even in '-n' mode, some information-gathering commands such as listing shelved CLs are executed, which may cause the script to take a bit of time to run on a large data set even in dry run mode. -d Specify that debug messages should be displayed. -D Use bash 'set -x' extreme debugging verbosity, and imply '-d'. -L off The special value '-L off' disables logging. This can only be used with '-n' for debugging. HELP OPTIONS: -h Display short help message -man Display man-style help message EXAMPLES: Example 1: Full Verify This script is typically called via cron with only the instance parameter as an argument, e.g.: p4verify.sh 1 Example 2: Fast Verify A "fast" verify is one in which only the check for MISSING archives is done, while the resource-intensive checksum calculation of potentially BAD existing archives is skipped. This is especially useful when used on a replica. p4verify.sh 1 -o MISSING Example 3: Fast and Recent Verify The '-o MISSING' and '-recent' flags can be combined for a very fast check. This check might be incorporated into a failover procedure. p4verify.sh 1 -o MISSING -recent Example 4: Submitted Files Only This will verify only use submitted files, ignoring shelves and the spec and unload depots, putting the results in a specified log: p4verify.sh 1 -ns -nS -nu -L -L /p4/1/logs/p4verify.submitted.log Example 5: Shelved Files Only This will verify only use submitted files, ignoring shelves and the spec and unload depots, putting them in a specified log: p4verify.sh 1 -nr -ns -nu -L /p4/1/logs/p4verify.shelved.log Example 6: A Dry Run The '-n' option can be used for a dry run. Output may also be displayed to the screen ('-v') for a dry run and the log file optionally discarded: p4verify.sh 1 -n -nS -L off -v Example 7: Archive File Load for New Replica The p4verify.sh script can be used to schedule transfers of a large number of files from a replica. When doing so, however, overloading the new replicas pull queue with too many files may impact metadata replication. This can be addressed by combining a variety of options, such as '-chunks' and '-Q'. For example: p4verify.sh 1 -chunks 200M -Q 10000 -w 20 -o MISSING NOHUP USAGE: Because archive verification is typically a long running task, it is advisable to use 'nohup' to call each command, and combine that by running the command as a background process. Alternately, use 'screen' or similar. Any of the examples above can be used with 'nohup', without output redirected to /dev/null (i.e. to "the void", as this script handles logging and output redirection). To use 'nohup', start the command line with 'nohup', and then after the command, add this text exactly: < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 & As a example, Example 2 above, called with nohup, would look like: nohup /p4/common/bin/p4verify.sh 1 -o MISSING < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 & With the ampersand '&' at the end, the command will appear to return immediately as the process continues to run in the background. Then optionally monitor the log: tail -f /p4/1/logs/p4verify.log LOGGING: This script generates no output by default. All (stdout and stderr) is logged to /p4/N/logs/p4verify.log. The exception is usage errors, which result an error being sent to stderr followed usage info on stdout, followed by an immediate exit. NOTIFICATIONS: In addition to logging, a short summary of the verify is sent as a notification. The summary is reliably short even if the output of the verifications done by this script results in a large log file. There are two notification schemes with this script: * Email notification is always attempted. * AWS SNS notification is attempted if the SNS_ALERT_TOPIC_ARN custom setting is defined. This is typically set in: /p4/common/site/config/p4_N.vars.local TIMING: The log file captures various timing information, including the time required to verify each depot, or each chunk or path if '-paths' or '-chunks' are used. The time to verify shelves in all depots is reported separately from submitted files. Timing indications all start with the text 'Time: ' on the beginning of a line of output in the log file, and can be extrated with a command like this example (adjusting the log file name as needed): grep ^Time: /p4/1/logs/p4verify.log EXIT CODES: An exit code of 0 indicates no errors were encountered attempting to perform verifications, AND that all verifications attempted reported no problems. A exit status of 1 indicates that verifications could not be attempted for some reason. A exit status of 2 indicates that verifications were successfully performed, but that problems such as BAD or MISSING files were detected, or else system limits prevented verification.