What is bigasm and how do I use it?

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bigasm is an internal ASM that is used to test saving and recovering large files using NetWorker without actually having the files on your filesystem. bigasm creates a stream of bytes in memory and saves them to tape. The bytes are a series of integers that are verified at restore time.

To use bigasm, create an empty file (for the directive pattern matching to work) and then add the following to the .nsr file in that directory:

 bigasm -S 100M:  bigasm_file

where "bigasm_file" is the file you created. Note that no data from the file will be stored when NetWorker uses bigasm. Run save and bigasm will store the indicated amount of data to the server:

       save -s server bigasm_file

If you used '100M' for the file size you should see a 100M "file" stored to your NetWorker server.

The option values for '-Samount' are standard NetWorker amounts: K, M, G, T, P, and E. Each is about 1000 times the size of the previous value.

This will test the composite speed of the client, your network, and the tape drive. It will not necessarily be a judge of total throughput since you will have eliminated disk access from the equation. There should not be a space between '-s' and 'amount.' An example for /.nsr:

 << / >>
       bigasm -S500M: big_asm

Note: In Windows the .nsr file should be nsr.dir instead. Everything else is the same, except the << / >> should be << \ >> in the nsr.dir file.