ChangeLog

version 0.56, unstable, January 10 2012, svn 589

* Fixed a linking bug with gcc-4.6. This version
   of gcc requires system libraries, like -lrt, to follow after
   application libraries (-lcurl, -levent) that are using the system libraries.
   Thanks to Eric Mueller, emueller@arbor.net for reporting the issue
   and testing patches.
   

version 0.55, unstable, January 9 2012, svn 588
	
* Bug in curl library required advancing to version
  where the issue is supposed to be fixed.
  At Ubuntu 10.4 building with SSL generate reporting 
  about "undefined reference to `SSLv2_client_method'"
	
* HTTP 1.1 HEAD and DELETE methods added.
   Thanks to Wei Guo, weiguo85@gmail.com
	

version 0.54, stable, January 2 2012, svn 587
	
* Fixed static linking to c-ares

* Disabled IPv6 in Makefile when building curl.
  Somehow that creates issues at Ubuntu.

* Fixed a crashing bug when running with -t option (multi-threading loading).
   Thanks to Shao, Shuchao (Simon) sshao@websense.com for
   finding the issue and providing the initial patch for fixing it.


version 0.53, March 11 2011, svn 584

* Updated to the latest libcurl, libevent and c-ares;

* Fixed compilation issue at Fedora-8 with 
    extern declaration of pread in parse_conf.c;

* Added patch providing URL randomization.
  Thanks to Pranav Desai <pranavadesai@gmail.com> for this patch.

	
version 0.52, stable, June 12 2010, svn 578
	
* Probability of using URLs was broken.
   Thanks to Val Shkolnikov <val@nvsoft.net> the patch restoring it back
    and for testing it.

* Loading of configuration files sometimes failed due to passing to strtok
   a char instead of a string.
   Thanks to Val Shkolnikov <val@nvsoft.net> the patch fixing it.

* Some servers are wrong with regards to content length, that they
  are reporting. This happens for some video streaming.
  Added a new tag to ignore server-reported context length.
  Thanks to Pranav Desai <pranavadesai@gmail.com> for this patch


version 0.51, stable, January 18, svn 574

* Releasing a new stable version. The last stable has been release
  in October 2007
* Updated to the most recent libcurl and libevent libraries
* DNS resolving now works via c-ares library.
  Thanks to Val Shkolnikov <val@nvsoft.net> for this suggestion and patch.

version 0.50, unstable, September 21, svn 570

* Advanced to curl-19.6, which is closing dead connections faster
  and contains other important fixes.

By Val Shkolnikov <val@nvsoft.net>

* Added a fixed request rate feature.
  It is a bit risky feature, but "Navigare necesse est ..."
* Fixed a bug for fixed-rate, where curl-loader would not stop on run time 
  expiration or url completion

By Val Shkolnikov <val@nvsoft.net>
* Directed operational statistics into a file with the extension .ops
* Added DUMP_OPSTATS and RUN_TIME options.
* Added time stamp to the .log file, streamlined logging using macros.
* Added a second -v option for varied level of logging detail.

* Renamed function getline to get_line since folks from RedHat are 
   polluting the namespace. Thanks to jari pietila <jari2004@hotmail.com>
   for reporting that.

* Fixed x86_64 arch related bug in parse_conf.c Thanks to nobody/anonymous.


version 0.49, unstable, July 5, 2009, svn 561

* Corrected weirdness in parse_conf.c Thanks to nobody/anonymous.

* Making of libcurl without support for SSH. Some platforms do not
   have libssh2 installed and it breaks our build.

* Post an XML-file as a body of POST request.
  An example of configuration file is conf-examples/post-xml.conf, where the XML-file itself is
  residing in the same configuration directory, namely conf-examples/some.xml
  The majic is now done by:
  REQUEST_TYPE=POST
  MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="file=@some.xml"

* Advanced to libevent-1.4.11-stable, which fixes several nastry epoll bugs.


version 0.48, unstable, April 9, 2009, svn 556

* Advanced to curl version 19.4 with several bugfixes in the area
  of multi-handle transfers, HTTPS, FTP/S and cookies handling.

* Work-around for the bug involving reading from file and using fgets,
   when gcc-4.3 is used with optimization. It is done by compiling the file
   parse_conf.c without optimization. Since the functionality of the file 
   matters only for reading configuration upon start, it is not supposed
   to impact performance.

* Added -x command-line option to let explicitly specify a proxy server. 
  By using the curl-loader option -x, curl-loader can be
  forced to set or unset a proxy independend of .curlrc and environment, making the
  proxy usage more transparent.
  Thanks to Frank <Frank_Migge@manulife.com> for this patch.

version 0.47, unstable, December 2, 2008, svn 551
	
* Fixed a POST-binary bug, where an extra check was preventing direct
   posting.
   Thanks to Alex <alex2048@gmail.com> and Gary Fitts <gary@intouchgroup.com>
	
* Fixed a bug on 64-bit ubuntoo, originating most probably from the
   wrong compiler optimization and running on an SMP machine, where 
   configuration files has failed to be loaded.
   Thanks to Sergei Shnaidman <sergei.shnaidman@qik.com> for 
   reporting, debugging and testing the fix.

* Integrated a great contribution from Gary Fitts <gary@intouchgroup.com>
  - template URL, where throusands URLs specifying by a single template is an option;
  - fetching of response tokens from the bodies of responses and usage them in template URL;
  - usage of statically defined in file tokens for template URL;
  - fixing of several bugs in that area
  - introduced new tags: 
   URL_TEMPLATE, RESPONSE_TOKEN, URL_TOKEN, URL_TOKEN_FILE

* UPLOAD_FILE bug fixed, where the same file-pointer for uploading was shared 
   among mulitple clients. Thanks to  Gary Fitts <gary@intouchgroup.com>.
	
*  Added for "Template URL" README and man pages, usage examples.


version 0.46, unstable, Sep 3, 2008, svn 534

* Advanced to curl-7.19.0 with more relevant fixes, particular in the
  area of multi-transfer and FTP bug fixes.
	
* Compilation fix for some linux-distros, like recent gentoo, by adding 
  #include <limits.h> in ip_secondary.c. Thanks to Aleksandar Lazic <al-curlloader@none.at>
  for reporting it.

* Proxy authentication bug fixed by Francois Pesce <francois.pesce@gmail.com>
  curl-loader now tested and works with proxies.

version 0.45, unstable, May 17, 2008, svn 531

* Advanced to libevent-1.4.4, which is supposed to deliver
  better performance for high loads

* Corrected the patch changing the NEVENT number.
  The patch was not applied in previous versions, limiting the number
   of virtual clients to only 32K


version 0.44, stable, October 21, 2007, svn 524

* Fixed bug crashing curl-loader, when run with -d command line option.
   Thanks to Iliyan Peychev <iliyan.peychev@gmail.com> for reporting it.

* Increased size of the parser buffer to consume long url strings from configuration
   files. 
   Thanks to Iliyan Peychev <iliyan.peychev@gmail.com> for suggesting it.

* Fixed building bug on systems with ldap development package installed.
   Added --disable-ldap option to libcurl configure script.
   Thanks to Mehdi Khalilzadeh <mehdi_khalilzadeh@yahoo.com> for reporting it.


version 0.43, September 18, 2007, svn 514

* Advanced to curl-7.17.0 recent version with more FTP bugfixes.

* Resolved IPv6 bug, when using a dedicated IPv6-address per client.
   It was broken with the first address used by all virtual clients. 

* Tag IP_SHARED_NUM added to enable multiple clients to use not a 
   single common IP and not a unique IP-address, but several IP-address.
   If IP_SHARED_NUM=3, first client gets the first address, second the second,
   third gets the third, whereas the forth client gets back the first address and so on.
   The feature should enable to support more than 64K loading clients without
   a need to assign a unique address to each client (which has its memory price and
   its own limitations). 
	
   Thus, to enable 200K loading clients, one can use about 64K clients per address
   and IP_SHARED_NUM=4 will be enough for such cases.
   The feature can be useful also, when somebody is not willing to use a unique
   IP per client, but does not like, that all clients are coming from the same IP-address.
   An example of the IP_SHARED_NUM usage is in ./conf-examples/bulk.conf
	
   IP_SHARED_NUM=1 is the cases of the so-called "common-IP" for all clients.
   Still defining the same IP-address in IP_ADDR_MIN and IP_ADDR_MAX will
   work as before for backward compartibility, and no need to specify IP_SHARED_NUM=1.


* Corrected, hopefully, finally, an issue of PAGE_SIZE, using getpagesize().

* Added an option to use random records from file for url.
  One can load a 10000 records and use them in a random fashion for
  1000 clients. We are not ensuring uniquickness of records used.
  Two more tags added to assist in doing that: FORM_RECORDS_FILE_MAX_NUM
  the number of records to load from a records file, and FORM_RECORDS_RANDOM,
  which says to the program to use the records loading randomly and not to link
  each records to a client by index.
  Note, that tag FORM_RECORDS_FILE_MAX_NUM should be prior to the tag 
  FORM_RECORDS_FILE.
  File with example of usage added is: ./conf-examples/random_file_records.conf

version 0.42, stable, September 05, 2007, svn 503

* Detailed logging option (-x) added outputs to <batch-name>.log file all
   request and response headers and bodies. Recommended not to combine
  it with verbose -v.
  This option was suggested by Artur Barashev <artvbar@gmail.com> and
  is supposed to enable HTTP and FTP request/responses tracing for encrypted
  HTTPS/FTPS traffic, where sniffers are not helpful.

* CentOS 64-bit was reported not defining PAGE_SIZE in <asm/page.h>
  Added a workaround to enable compilation.

* When FRESH_CONNECT=1 tag is specified for FTP URLs, new 
  FTP connections have been opened in due course, but old FTP connections 
  were kept forever and not closed. The bugfix committed to SVN forces old 
  connections to be closed.

  Current behavior is the following:
   a) an established control FTP-connection is closed immediately just after a 
       file transfer is accomplished;
   b) an established data FTP-connection is not closed after transfer, but is kept 
      during sleeping time and goes closed only after a new data connection is opened;

  Current behavior still may require to define twice higher number of connections 
  allowed by your FTP server, than the number of clients in curl-loader.	
  Thanks to John Gatewood Ham <buraphalinuxserver@gmail.com> for
  reporting the problem and testing patches.


version 0.41, July 26 2007, svn 492

* Critical bug, where loading credentials/tokens from file has been
   broken. Thanks to Artur Barashev <artvbar@gmail.com> for this
   patch.
	
* Building libcurl with --without-libidn option. This creates mainly
   building problems. Users, that would like to resolve IDNA domain
   names with "international" letters should build it with
   --with-libidn=full-path-dir.

* Setting empty cookies to CURL handle only for the very first url.
  The bug has been reported by Artur <artvbar@gmail.com> Fixed?

* Advanced to curl-7.16.4 recent release. Patch ./patches/curl-hash.patch
  moved to curl mainline, and, therefore, is not necessary and removed.

* Makefile DESTDIR to support make install DESTDIR=/some/fake/root
  for packaging purposes. Thanks to John Gatewood Ham
  <buraphalinuxserver@gmail.com> for this patch.


version 0.40, July 5 2007, svn 468

* Tag FETCH_PROBABILITY adds support in order a client (virtual)
   to deal with a URL not as a must, but with a certain probability.
   The allowed values are in the range from 1 to 100 percents. If one needs
   a zero percent probability, he can just remove/comment-out the url from
   the batch-file. When somebody places 100, it means, that the tag can be 
   actually commented out, because the url is a must.
   How it works? When a client comes to a url, it examines, whether the url
   should be fetched with a certain probability and not for certain. If the url
   is a MUST (no tag FETCH_PROBABILITY), the client fetches the url.
   If the tag is configured, the client makes a random decision and with
   a probability of the tag value fetches the url. If the url is not to be fetched,
   the client goes to the next url or, when there are no other urls,
   increases the cycles count.
   Tag FETCH_PROBABILITY_ONCE forces the decision of a client regarding
   each url to be done only once upon the first cycle and to be remembered for 
   other cycles.

   The feature is a fresh one and not tested intensively.

* Random timers added as an option to TIMER_AFTER_URL_SLEEP = 0-2000,
   which means, that a client will sleep for some random time from 0 to 2000 
   millisec. It can be an option also to TIMER_URL_COMPLETION, whereas
   less useful. 
   Files url.c and ./conf-examples/timers-random-range.conf added to svn.

* Bugfix Common-IP (same minimal and max ip addresses) was buggy for
  SMP configurations.

* Corrected Timeouted to "Timed Out". Thanks to BuraphaLinux Server
  <buraphalinuxserver@gmail.com> for the patch.

* Advanced to curl-7.16.3. Several patches removed as they are now in 
   mainline curl. Re-based and corrected patch curl-hash.patch, submitted it to curl.

* Throughput limit for download/upload operations can be configured for each client 
   now on a per-url bases using a new tag TRANSFER_LIMIT_RATE. The value of
   the tag to be provided as bytes (not bits) per second.
   Makefile: -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 - added to compiling to ensure support for
   large files (>4GB).

* Initial support for multipart form data POST-ing as in RFC1867 has been added. 
   Several tags MULTIPART_FORM_DATA can be used for a url to post in a 
   configuration file, e.g. as in ./conf-examples/multipart-formdata-post.conf:
	
   MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="yourname=Michael"
   MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="filedescription=Cool text file with cool text inside"
   MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="htmlcode=<HTML></HTML>;type=text/html"
   MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="file=@cooltext.txt"
   MULTIPART_FORM_DATA="coolfiles=@fil1.gif,fil2.txt,fil3.html"

   Currently, the feature uses the strings provided AS_IS and does not generate
   any unique users, unique passwords or loads tokens from file.
   To prevent from sending "Expect: 100-continue", pass as a custom HTTP header
   HEADER="Expect: "
	
   Still, should be tested as we do not have and server side for that.



version 0.32, 21/06/2007, svn 431

* Newly added tag per url RESPONSE_STATUS_ERRORS supports changes to the
   default set of response statuses considered by errors. By default 4xx without
   401 and 407 and all 5xx response codes are treated as errors.
   Now you can either add a status to the errors or remove it. Sign + adds, - removes.
   The syntaxes is a line of tokens separated by ',', where each tokens begins with either
   + or - and is followed by the response status number from 0 up to 600.
	
   For example,  the effect of RESPONSE_STATUS_ERRORS="+200,-404"
   is that 200 responses will be considered for that url as errors, whereas 404 
   will be considered as success. File ./conf-examples/resp_errors.conf added.

* Support of form-post tokens file (former credentials file) has been enhanced
   to use up to 16 tokens, which means up to 16 forms to fill.
   New separators added with the following supported: , : ; @ / and space.

* Fixed a bug with ramp-up being stopped occasionally a long prior
   to the clients number reached the desired CLIENTS_MAX_NUM.

  That occured due to the ramp-up timer being cancelled by mistake/bug.
  What happend is that for periodic timers till the timer handling routine returns, 
  the slot (timer-id) is free and can be occupied by the timer we schedule in the
  timer-handling routine.  Thus, it creates a bug with the two timers having the 
  same timer-id.

  Ramp-up timer was cancelled by the url-timeout monitoring timers, scheduled in
  load_next, called by timer handling of ramp-up periodic timer.

  The fix included reservation of the timer slot for periodic timers. The slot is
  released explicitly, if the timer-handling routine fails with error (returns -1).


* SMP/multi-cores initial support added. When -t <n> command line option 
   is provided, the batch clients are devided to <n> sub-batches, each in charge
   for CLIENTS_MAX_NUM / <n> clients. The sub-batches are run from the 
   independent threads, whereas the statistics is collected by the thread running
   the group-leader, so-called master thread.
   
* GET forms are supported now. The example configuration is in
   ./conf-examples/get-forms.conf

* Fixed bug introduced with dynamic allocation of buffer for FORM_STRING
	
* Buffer for FORM_STRING value to be allocated on-demand
   and dynamically and not to be limited to 256 bytes as before.

* Bug fixed, that responses logged using LOG_RESP_BODIES=1
   or LOG_RESP_HEADERS=1 went to the subdirectory of the previous
   url, when an empty/current url was used, e.g. on POST after GET.
   Responses logging to files functionality separated to a dedicated function
   set_response_logfile (struct client_context* cctx, struct url_context* url)
   The function is called also from the code, where current url obtained by 
   prev GET is prepared for POST-ing of credentials.
  

version 0.31 - released 31/05/2007, svn 399

* Tag TIMER_URL_COMPLETION is a rename of UAS_URL_MAX_TIME
    now comes in milliseconds and enforced. When a value of the tag is
   above 0, we are monitoring the url-fetching and cancelling it, if above
   the specified milliseconds.
   The results are presented on the Load Status GUI as the operation Timed out
   statistics and is reflected in files as T-Err number.
   When a url fetch is cancelled on the url-completion timeout, the number of Failed
   operations also increases.

* Added an option to log response body-bytes and headers to 
   files. To log body bytes add tag LOG_RESP_BODIES=1 to your
   configuration file. To log headers add LOG_RESP_HEADERS=1.
   See log_hdr_body.conf as an example.

   Directory <batch-name> is created with subdirs url0, url1, url<n>
   Each url subdir contains files named
   cl-<client-num>-cycle-<cycle-num>.body or
   cl-<client-num>-cycle-<cycle-num>.hdr respectively.

   Note, that output to file is currenly done in a most simple way
   and seriously impacts performance. Use it only with a small number
   of clients and for a few cycles.

* Added statistics for 1xx HTTP responses (100 and 101).
	
* Authentication (web and proxy) re-worked to make authentication
   method configurable using tags WEB_AUTH_METHOD and
   PROXY_AUTH_METHOD. Credentials may be specified by
   the tags WEB_AUTH_CREDENTIALS and PROXY_AUTH_CREDENTIALS.
   When no credentials are specified, we are building them using username
   and password as the syntax <username>:<password>

* HTTP PUT support added. URL should contain a filename,
   not only the directory. A path to upload file should be specified by
  the tag UPLOAD_FILE.

* Load Status GUI with statistics presentation improved.
   Current and summary operational number are presented
   together: first number is currect, seconds is the summary. 
	
* FTP tested and improved. Minor bug fixed in loader.c
  File ftp.conf file corrected by adding FRESH_CONNECT tag.
  Added a new file ftp_http.conf.
  Added a tag to support active FTP: FTP_ACTIVE
  FTP uploading tested to be supported.
  File ftp_upload.conf configuration added.
   
  Note, that proftpd as well as other servers have a few DOS protection
  options. Take care to configure them properly and look also in your server
  logs, don't blame as for every error.

* Added an option to configure a single common ip-address for all clients.
  When IP_ADDR_MIN and IP_ADDR_MAX configured values are the same
  it will be interpreted both for IPV4 and IPV6 as a signal to re-use the IP for
  all clients. If the address does not exist, it will be added to the interface 
  specified by the tag INTERFACE.
	
* New tag TIMER_TCP_CONN_SETUP provides an option to over-write a global
  configurable default and to configure for a url a timeout for TCP connection 
  establishment (including resolving).
	
* Added new taq FRESH_CONNECT will enable to change the default 
  behavior and to close/re-open TCP connection.
	
* Tags simplified to support:
   - POST (in future also PUT) for any url;
   - make several subsequest POST-ings;
   - provide a more flexible configuration with multiple-Logins, Logoffs,
     and authentications.

* Tag CLIENTS_NUM renamed to CLIENTS_NUM_MAX

   Tag CLIENTS_INITIAL_INC renamed to CLIENTS_RAMPUP_INC

  Tag URLS_NUM, a rename of UAS_URLS_NUM, moved to section
  General. Sections LOGIN and LOGOFF removed, UAS section renamed
  to URL-section
	
  Tag URL_USE_CURRENT will serve to enable POST/PUT on a previous
  url, e.g. obtained by the previous GET/POST/PUT. Thus, old tags 
  <LOGIN/LOGOFF>CYCLING are not in need any more.
	
  Tag URL_DONT_CYCLE will mark a url as not-cycled, which should be 
  fetched only once.
	
  Tag CUSTOM_HEADER renamed to HEADER and moved to the URL-section
  level. Thus, headers of each url could be independently customized.
	
  Tags USERNAME and PASSWORD moved to the URL level to support for
  multiple authentications and/or POST-ing of credentials for every URL.
	
  Tag URL_SHORT_NAME is a newly added tag to provide a short up to 12
  character name to appear in statistics presentation.
	
  Taq REQUEST_TYPE is a rename of LOGIN_REQ_TYPE, but should appear
  with every URL with valid strings "GET", "POST" and "PUT", Worth to mention,
  that "GET" is no more a default and should appear explicitly. Another point is
  that GET+POST to be arranged in 2 separate URL setting of GET with the next
  url with POST and tag URL_USE_CURRENT to re-use the fetched url 
	
  Taq FORM_STRING is a rename of LOGIN_POST_STR, whereas to control the
  type there is a tag FORM_USAGE_TYPE to be defined explicitly.
	
  Tag FORM_RECORDS_FILE is a rename of CREDENTIALS_FILE.
	
  Tag UPLOAD_FILE is a newly added tag to support in future method PUT.
	
  New tags WEB_AUTH_METHOD, WEB_AUTH_CREDENTIALS, 
  PROXY_AUTH_METHOD and PROXY_AUTH_CREDENTIALS will support 
  explicitly web and proxy authentication.

  New taq FRESH_CONNECT will enable to change the default behavior and 
  to close/re-open TCP connection.

  New tag TIMER_TCP_CONN_SETUP provides an option to over-write a global
  configurable default and to configure for a url a timeout for TCP connection 
  establishment (including resolving).

  Tag TIMER_URL_COMPLETION is a rename of tags 
  <LOGIN/UAS/LOGOFF>_URL_MAX_TIME 
  and will be in msec, not in seconds as before.

  Tag TIMER_AFTER_URL_SLEEP is a rename of tags 
  <LOGIN/UAS/LOGOFF>_URL_INTERLEAVE_TIME

* Storming mode - discontinued

* Support for multiple batches, using threads, dicontinued.
   The feature may be used internally to shared load among
   several thread, when using the tool at SMP/multi-core HW.
   

version 0.30 "stable", 26/04/2007, svn-325

* Memory consumption per virtial client decreased from 60-65 K
   to 30-35 K by patching and configuring libcurl.

* Load Status GUI enhanced by added +|- options to increase
   number of clients for 1 or 10, respectively. Added an option to
   switch back and forth between Automatic and Manual mode
   of increasing the number of loading clients.

* Load Status GUI strings shorten for a easier fit to a screen.

* Added a new command-line option "-w" to skip out all warnings
  and suggestions by curl-loader.


version 0.29 18/04/2007, svn-299

* Placed suggestions for tcp kernel memory tuning to environment.c
  Fixed the bug with not-blocking smashing of fd_set.
	
* FAST-START file renamed to QUICK-START

* Migration to curl-7.16.2. Patch rename curl_multi_noselect ()
  to curl_multi_action ()

* Fixed the bug with sprintf overflow of statistics and logs filenames.
  Thanks to Alexandre Bezroutchko <abb@scanit.be> for pointing
  this issue.

* Usage of get_time_tick () with gettimeofday () inside has been 
  decreased by calling it in cycles only for each
  TIME_RECALCULATION_MSG_NUM (10) cycle.
	
* Busy-looping for the default smooth mode has been fixed.
	
* Hyper-mode bug fixed with CSELECT_IN event mistakenly used in the
  instead of CSELECT_OUT.

* Hyper-mode bug fixed with no clients scheduling for load, when
  CLIENT_INITIAL_INC=0 or the tag is not defined.

* Profiling option (-pg) added to the making line. Run, e.g.
  make optimize=1 debug=1 profile=1



version 0.28 08/04/2007, svn- 270

* Improved validation of environment issue (allowed number of open
   sockets), which are separated to a new file environment.c

* Added PROBLEM-REPORTING file.

* Initial release of our hyper mode. It is really an experimental mode and 
   requires more testing and optimization. But this is a good start - 
   Navigare Nesesse Est. Our goal is to reach 50-100 K of HTTP libcurl
   working connections from a single thread.

* Improved performance of the smooth (default) and hyper
   mode by exluding unnecessary remove and add of a handle
   from/to multihandle in setup_curl_handle () in loader.c.

* Improved preformance of all modes by making patch to libcurl
   (accepted to libcurl mainstream) changing linear traversal of
   curl_multi_remove_handle () to the single-step lookup.

* LOGIN_POST_STR added an option to generate unique users
   with the same password. Thanks to Jeremy Brown 
   <jbrown_at_novell.com> for motivating this feature.

* Improved validation of LOGIN_POST_STR string; the validation moved
   to parse_conf.c. Size of the buffer for the string increased from 64,
   which is not enough,  to 256 bytes. Thanks to Jeremy Brown 
   <jbrown_at_novell.com> for reporting this bug.


version 0.27 svn 227

* Added facility to customize/add/over-write HTTP/FTP headers. 
   Tag CUSTOM_HEADER is serving for this feature. Up to 16 custom 
   HTTP/FTP headers are allowed. 
   If a header already exits by default, the custom header over-writes it. 
   USER_AGENT tag is for User-Agent header only, whereas by 
   CUSTOM_HEADER may be added or over-written any header (including
   User-Agent).
   An example of batch configuration is ./conf-examples/custom_hdrs.conf
	
* Fixed crash in statistics, when login operations defined, but logoff not.
	
* Added an option to load login credentials (user and password) from a file.
   A text file with usernames and passwords with the structure of 
   each string like: <username><separator><password> can be used as an input.
   According to RFC1738, only reserved ':', '@', '/' and probably ' ' (space) are safe 
   to use as separators between username and password.
   Tag LOGIN_CREDENTIALS_FILE specifies the path to the file with
   credentials (full-path or relative to curl-loader). An example of batch 
   configuration is ./conf-examples/credentials_fr_file.conf and an example of
   credentials in ./conf-examples/credentials.cred.
	
* Cleanup of allocations and client array initializations in login.c
	
* IPv6 support added. Batch configuration conf-example/ipv6.conf
   and patch patches/curl-ipv6-bind.patch are added. The patch has been
   integrated to the mainline libcurl, therefore we shall remove it, when moving
   to the next libcurl release.
   Our code now actually supports other scopes for IP, than "global". Do we
   need to make an option to configure scope for IP-address?
   TODO: IPv6 flow label support?
	
* Libevent library added to the making process as a separate
   making target.
	
* Added USER_AGENT tag to the section GENERAL to make HTTP User-Agent 
   header configurable. When no tag or empty tag or empty tag string is 
   specified, curl-loader takes the default User-Agent header of MSIE-6 (sorry,
   FireFox folks).

* Documentation improved, HOWTOS-* files removed with their content
   moved to README. README file re-worked to have a more structured fashion.
   FAST-START file added.

* Web-site added.
	

version 0.26 - svn 151

* Added support for HTTP Authentication and Proxy Authentication.
   The methods supported are Basic, Digest (RFC2617) and NTLM.
   When an HTTP server/proxy responds by 401 or 407, libcurl will choose the 
    most safe method from those, supported by the server/proxy.

* "make menuconfig" opens dialog menu to assist in creation of
   a loading batch configuration file. Building dialog package requires
   ncurses development package.
   Run "make menuconfig" to see, what happens.

* Batch configuration tags since this version can be provided as either quotted 
   or not quotted. Empty string tags to be marked as "", whereas "N/A" string is
   still supported for the backward compartibility.
	
* Unified making. The script build_curl.sh has gone. Now to build both the libcurl 
   and curl-loader with optimization, just run:
   >make cleanall; make optimize=1
   To build both libcurl and curl-loader with optimization and without
   debugging:
   >make cleanall; make optimize=1 debug=0

* CAPS number added to the "standing" Loading Status GUI. It is
   calculated as the number of the first cycled state, entered by clients 
   per second.

* 4xx HTTP client error, which are not 401 or 407 (authentication required),
   are considered now errors.

* Operation statistics added to the "standing" Loading Status GUI, namely,
   number of url successful or failed for LOGIN, for each UAS url and for 
   LOGOFF operations;

* "Standing" Loading Status GUI improved with regards to its layout.



version 0.25, 14/02/2007, svn 121

* "Standing" Loading Status GUI added to present running counters.
    Looks like a very convenient way for looking at loading in-progress.
	
* Added summary statistics of load to be outputted at statistics
   snapshot intervals together with an interval statistics. Very useful
   feature.
	
* Configuration file tag NETMASK now accepts also netmask as IPv4
   quad-dotted string, not only as a CIDR number.
	
* Command line option -i <seconds> added to make intermediate statistics
   snapshoting timer configurable.

* Gradual increase of clients number at startup re-worked to use timer and
    timer-queue.

* Added timer to test periodically the size of logfile in smooth mode. 
   Command-line option -l < logfile maxsize> now brings another semantics and 
   provides size limit for a batch logfile in MB (default 1024 MB). When the
   logfile size limit is reached, the file is rewinded.
   This closes the issue of unlimited logfile in smooth mode.

* Added to the timer-node pointer to timer handling function <func_timer>. 
  Timer-queue will use another newly added function <tq_dispatch_nearest_timer>
  to remove nearest timer node from the timer-queue and call for <func_timer>
  of the node. Further <tq_dispatch_nearest_timer> re-schedules periodic timers,
  and manages memory issues against internal mpool of hnodes.
	
  This makes handling of timers mode rather Object Oriented.



version 0.24, 06/02/2007, svn 106


* Smooth mode now respects the interleave timeouts between urls,
   when the timeouts configured to be some values in milliseconds above
   10 msec. This is achived by keeping clients in the heap-based timer queue.
   When an interleave timeout is specified as 0, next url or next action of
    such clients is scheduled immediately without timer-queue scheduling.

* Added support for gradual increase of clients number at the loading
   start. Use tag CLIENTS_INITIAL_INC in GENERAL section
   to specify the number of loading clients to be added each second till
   the total client number, specified by CLIENTS_NUM tag.

* The interleave timeout numbers will be interpreted now as milliseconds,
   not seconds as before. Take care to update your configuration files.

* Configuration file parser has been re-designed to be based on 
   TAG-tag_parser_func mapping. The big "object-oriented" parsing switch
   has been waived out.

* TODO list updated.

* Advanced to the newest libcurl version 7.16.1 to fix several FTP and 
  multi-handle issues



version 0.23 06/12/2006, svn-79

* The limitation of 1000 clients per batch have been removed. Try 1500, 2000 and
  may be even more, but care about number of sockets available and their 
  recycling.
	
* The behavior of -r option has been reverted.
   The default behavior of curl-loader now is to re-use a tcp-connection for next
   request-response cycles. If you are specifying -r command-line option, the 
   connection will be closed and re-opened for the next request. Whether it is
   appropriate for you to work with -r or without depends on your server support
   of Keep-Alive, and the purpose of your testing. Try with and without -r and 
   see, what do you get. Connection reuse default decreases consumption of 
   opened descriptors (sockets) and ports with sockets in TIME_WAIT states.

* HTTP 4xx client errors are now supported with statistics, logging, etc

version 0.22 28/11/2006, svn-75

* Fixed stack smashing bug after curl_multi_fdset (). Libcurl
  cannot check, whether our descriptor is within valid FD_SETSIZE
  range. Therefore, we are increasing FD_SETSIZE and doing the job.
  Thanks to Evgeniy Polyakov <johnpol@2ka.mipt.ru> for reporting 
  the problem.

* HOWTOS-BIG-LOAD added to address the appropriate setup for large loads.

version 0.21 22/11/2006, svn-62

* Building bug fix and more explanations about building requirements.

* Code commented mostly and function headers added

* CURL handles moved from array in batch to the client context, to which
  it belongs

version 0.20 14/11/2006, svn-48

* Bugs fixed in storming mode, where cycling logoff was broken and some
   interleave timeouts not respected.

* Smooth mode set to be the default loading mode. When libcurl detects an error
   with a client, by default the client continues loading, starting a new cycle from 
   the beginning. When -e command line option is specified, client with 
   libcurl-error will not be scheduled no more for loading.

* Clients table dumped to file $batch_name.ctx. This is done when the loading
    is accomplished either naturally or by SIGINT.

* SIGINT closes loading and dumps final statistics to statistics file.

* Loading statistics outputted to file $batch_name.txt with the last string as
   final statistics string, separated by a string with asterisks.

version 0.19 9/11/2006, svn-40

* Loading statistics for HTTP/HTTPS enhanced for smooth-mode and added
  for storming mode.
  The statistics includes the following counters:
   - requests num;
   - responses success num;
   - 3xx redirects num;
   - server 5xx errors num;
   - other errors num, like resolving, tcp-connect, server closing or 
     empty responses num;
   - average application server delay (msec), estimated as the time between 
     HTTP request and HTTP response without taking into the account network
     latency (RTT);
   - average application server delay for 2xx (success) HTTP-responses, as above,
     but only for 2xx responses. The motivation for that is that 3xx redirections
     and 5xx server errors/rejects may not necessarily provide a true indication
     of a testing server working functionality.

* FTP and FTPs support added. Currently it should go to UAS urls section and use
   for passing user credentials ftp url (RFC 1738), like:
   ftp://username:password@hostname:port/etc-str
   File ftp.conf added to configs directory.

* All url-specific context collected to url_context structure to reside in 
   the new file url.h. Function single_handle_setup () re-worked and HTTP-specific
   part separated to setup_handle_appl 9) function, which is in preparation to 
   support more protocols besides http/s.

* THANKS file added.
* Building directories re-arranged. Directory packages arranged with dialog,
   and c-ares tarballs added. 
	
* Advanced to libcurl 7.16.0.

* Instead of bloody hacking used in loader_smooth.c mperform_smooth () to get
   access to client_context* cctx, finally we are using setting and getting cctx via
   PRIVATE pointer API. The hacking broke compiling against libcurl starting 
   from 7.15.5.
	
* Effective URL will be outputted to logfile, thanks for 
   CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL facility. Usefull to provide real urls
   after redirections, not just the urls client starts with
  

version 0.18, 1/11/2006 svn-21

-Major improvement of configuration. Several command line options removed and
instread the configuration file enhanced. Configuration file separated to several
sections, namely:
- GENERAL;
- LOGIN;
- UAS (user activity simulation, like fetching URLs and sleeping);
- LOGOFF;
Only GENERAL section is a MUST, whereas other sections are enabled whenever
is necessary, depending on the purpose of the testing. 

-Several more options for LOGIN and LOGOFF parts are added.

- Login and logoff of clients may be configured to be done only once or to
be cycled with optional UAS-load in between of login and logoff cycles.

- Smooth-loading mode with statistics is finally back to work after being
broken for a while.

- Options -a, -w and -z removed. Instead of using -a option, one may dublicate
the login url in UAS section.



version 0.17, 10/11/2006

-Added ChangeLog and TODO files.
	
-README - improved to contain information, available before only
 from curl_loader -h

-Authentication using POST has been unfortunately disabled in storming
 mode. Fixed the bug, with thanks to Arik Nahmany, Arik.Nahmany@vocaltec.com,
 for pointing this.

-Some people may be interested to load their servers with multiple logging of
 the same user and with the same password. We have allowed a more
 sophisticated case with user and password incrementing and being unique, but
 no reason not to support this rather simple case. Added support for this,
 where, when POST login string contains two %d, we are incrementing username
 and password, and, if the string lacks any %d symbols, this id the simple
 case. Thanks to Arik Nahmany, Arik.Nahmany@vocaltec.com for suggesting this
 feature and testing it.

-Fixed an old bug of storming mode, where the first url used in
 authentication was also participating in further load. When authentication is
 required, the first url not to be used in load, unless option '-a' is added to to the 
 commandline.

-Added support for cookies, which are set in some cases upon authentication.

-Enabled infinitive number of redirections. 

- Logoff operation enabled as GET-only, GET+POST and POST-only. Initially,
 it was tested for the storming mode. This is managed by the '-w' commandline
 option, whereas '-z' is in charge for tuning login options between GET+POST 
and POST-only.

	
version 0.15
Basic version to be referred to.
            Full path to the file (from curl-loader binary), containing login credentials strings
         formatted as usernameSEPARATORpassword without spaces left. We are supporting 
         separators ':', '@', '/' and ' ' (space), which according to RFC1738 are safe to use between username 
         and password. Only one of the above separators to be used in each file.         
        Note, that when the file with credentials is specified, "Login POST String Matrix" should not contain %d
         symbols and to be something like  "user=%s&password=%s"

containing credentials lines formatted as 
          userSEPpasswrd without spaces left.