A flat-file alternative to the SQLite chatlog backend with runtime
switching, full migration tooling, integrity verification, and a
synthetic load harness. SQLite remains the default; both backends share
one dispatch layer (db_backend_t vtable) so callers don't change.
Storage layout
- Per-contact append-only `flatlog/<account>/<contact>/history.log`
under XDG_DATA_HOME, one line per message
- Single-line file header with embedded format-version marker
(FLATFILE_FORMAT_VERSION); reader warns on missing or mismatched
marker, writer and checker stay in sync via preprocessor
stringification
- Deterministic key=value metadata (`id`, `aid`, `corrects`, `to`,
`to_res`, `read`) plus escaped body \u2014 `\|`, `\]`, `\\`, `\n`, `\r`
literals prevent log injection
- Sparse byte-offset index (FF_INDEX_STEP=500) per contact for
O(log n) time-range lookups; rebuilt on inode / size / mtime
change, extended in-place when the file just grew
- Per-contact GHashTable caches for archive_id presence and
stanza_id \u2192 from_jid mapping (O(1) MAM dedup, O(1) LMC sender
validation)
Hardening
- Path-traversal protection: JID directory name normalisation
(`@` \u2192 `_at_`, slashes and `..` rejected at construction); every
per-contact path is anchored under the account's flatlog/
directory and validated before open
- Symlink-attack protection: every fopen / open uses O_NOFOLLOW; on
ELOOP the operation aborts with an error rather than following
- Filesystem permissions: log files created with mode 0600,
directories with mode 0700; both enforced at creation, verified
on each open and reported on drift by `/history verify`
- Atomic crash-safe export: write to a temp file via mkstemp (mode
0600, random suffix, no name collisions between concurrent
exports), fsync, then rename \u2014 partial state never replaces the
live file
- Concurrency: advisory flock(LOCK_EX) held for the duration of
every write, including append from live messages and full rewrite
from export, so two profanity processes can't interleave bytes
on the same log
- DoS / abuse guards:
* FF_MAX_LINE_LEN = 10 MB \u2014 lines longer than this are rejected
at read with a warning; the parser will not allocate
unbounded memory for a single record
* FF_MAX_LMC_DEPTH = 100 \u2014 `corrects:` chain walk stops at this
depth and emits a warning, preventing a malicious correction
cycle from spinning the apply pass
* FF_VERSION_SCAN_MAX = 16 \u2014 header version probe never reads
past 16 leading comment lines, even on garbage input
* Empty / inverted byte-range early-return in page-up read path
so a malformed time filter cannot cause an unbounded scan
* Zero-entry index guard so a file whose every line failed to
parse cannot cause a NULL deref on later page-up
- LMC sender validation: an incoming correction whose sender does
not match the original message's sender is rejected at write
time and surfaced via cons_show_error; a cycle in the apply pass
is broken via a visited-set
- jid_create_from_bare_and_resource treats NULL, empty string, and
the literal "(null)" as no resource and returns a bare jid;
similar normalisation for barejid eliminates the legacy
"user@host/(null)" artefact that leaked into stored fulljids
whenever g_strdup_printf("%s", NULL) ran inside create_fulljid
Commands
- `/history switch sqlite|flatfile` \u2014 runtime backend swap, closes
the old backend and opens the new one without reconnecting
- `/history export [<jid>]` \u2014 SQLite -> flat-file, merging with any
existing flatlog (dedup keyed on a SHA-256 hash mixing stanza_id,
timestamp, from_jid, body \u2014 robust against id reuse by older
clients)
- `/history import [<jid>]` \u2014 flat-file -> SQLite, same merge
semantics, runs inside a single SQLite transaction with rollback
on per-contact failure
- `/history verify [<jid>]` \u2014 integrity check; emits a structured
list of issues (ERROR / WARNING / INFO) per file:
* file-level: missing log, wrong permissions (\u2260 0600), UTF-8
BOM present, CRLF line endings, empty file
* line-level: invalid UTF-8 (with byte offset), embedded
control characters, unparsable lines, timestamps out of
order, duplicate `id:` and `aid:` (tracked separately so a
stanza/archive id collision isn't double-reported)
* cross-line: broken `corrects:` references whose target id is
not present in the file
- `/history backend` \u2014 show currently active backend
- Active backend indicator `[sqlite]` / `[flatfile]` in the status
bar next to the JID
- Roster-JID autocomplete for verify / export / import
- export and import open a SQLite handle on demand when the
flatfile backend is currently active, so migration works
regardless of which backend is live
Tests
- Unit: database_export (parser round-trip, escape/unescape, dedup
key stability, JID normalisation), database_stress (14 cases
exercising rapid writes, large messages, deep LMC chains, MAM
dedup, concurrent contacts)
- Functional: history persistence across reconnects, export /
import round-trip with content equality, MUC migration,
timestamp normalisation across timezones
- Bench harness P1\u2013P5 (synthetic load: bulk insert, time-range
read, page-up scroll, MAM ingest, mixed workload) and failure
modes F1\u2013F17 (page-up cursor and forward-iteration symmetry,
oversized lines, MAM dedup, LMC depth and cycles, BOM/CRLF,
missing log, empty file, mtime+inode flip, broken corrects, etc.)
- All bench tests integrate with the existing make targets and
emit CSV rows for baseline comparison
Author: jabber.developer2 <jabber.developer2@jabber.space>
Reviewed-by: jabber.developer <jabber.developer@jabber.space>
Flat-file backend bench harness
Synthetic load tests for the flat-file database backend. Not part of make check — must be invoked explicitly. See REVIEW.txt Phase-9 plan for the
design and scenario list.
Quick start
# small (~40 MB corpus due to mixed length profile, ~10 seconds total)
make bench-quick
# medium (~2 GB corpus, ~1 minute)
make bench BENCH_VOLUME=medium
# max (~20 GB corpus, ~5–10 minutes, requires NVMe + plenty of free disk)
make bench BENCH_VOLUME=max
# Everything: P1 + long messages + failure-injection + S9/S10/S11 variants
make bench-full
# Compare against committed baseline (see Baseline section below)
make bench-compare
# Just the long-message battery (L1–L14, ~5 seconds, self-contained)
make bench-longmsg
# Just failure-injection tests (F1–F15, ~10 ms total)
make bench-failure
# S7/S8 export/import pipeline at default 100k rows
make bench-pipeline
# Same pipeline at 1M rows (~5 min, ~3 GB disk)
make bench-pipeline-max
After a run, results land in tests/bench/current.csv:
scenario,volume,bytes,lines,wall_ms,peak_rss_kb,note
S1_cold_tail,small,1453782,10000,4.512,12340,tail page=100
S2_warm_tail,small,1453782,10000,1.823,12340,tail page=100
...
Volume profiles
| Profile | Lines | Years | Length profile | Disk | Time on NVMe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
small |
10 000 | 1 | mixed |
~5 MB | ~10 s |
medium |
500 000 | 5 | mixed |
~100 MB | ~1 min |
max |
5 000 000 | 10 | long |
~1 GB | ~5–10 min |
Scenarios in P1 (make bench)
| ID | What | Bench function |
|---|---|---|
| S1 | Cold tail-access (drop cache, fetch last 100 lines via sparse-index seek) | run_tail_access(drop=1) |
| S2 | Warm tail-access (cache hot) | run_tail_access(drop=0) |
| S3 | Deep pagination (1 000 binary-search lookups across the index) | run_deep_pagination |
| S4 | First-time index build (cold file → ff_state_ensure_fresh) |
run_first_build |
| S5 | Incremental extend (append N lines, ensure no full rebuild) | run_incremental_extend |
| S6 | Verify-equivalent full parse pass | run_verify |
P2 corpus variants (separate make targets)
Each variant generates its own corpus and reuses bench_runner's scenarios.
| Target | Corpus | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
make bench-multicontact |
200 contacts × 5k lines × 3 years | S9 — directory discovery & multi-state cost |
make bench-lmc |
100k lines, 30 % LMC corrections | S10 — correction-heavy LMC chain throughput |
make bench-ooo |
100k lines, 20 % MAM out-of-order | S11 — verify must surface timestamp warnings |
make bench-longmsg |
(no corpus, self-contained tests) | L1–L14 — long-message stress |
make bench-full |
runs all of the above sequentially | reporting baseline |
Long-message tests (L1–L14)
Run via make bench-longmsg. Each test generates N messages with a specific
body size and content pattern, writes via ff_write_line, reads via
ff_readline + ff_parse_line, asserts body length match, emits a CSV row.
| ID | Body | Pattern | Count | What it verifies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | 1 KB | filler | 100 | sanity / fast path |
| L2 | 10 KB | filler | 100 | escape pipeline at moderate size |
| L3 | 100 KB | filler | 100 | paste-bomb territory |
| L4 | 1 MB | filler | 50 | 50 MB pipe — measures throughput |
| L5 | 5 MB | filler | 10 | 50 MB pipe |
| L6 | 9.9 MB | filler | 4 | just under FF_MAX_LINE_LEN (10 MB) |
| L7 | 10 MB+1 | filler | 1+1 | rejection path: ff_readline returns "" + skips |
| L8 | 100 KB | embedded \n |
50 | escape stress (each \n doubles to \\n) |
| L9 | 100 KB | embedded | |
50 | body pipes (not metadata) shouldn't choke parser |
| L10 | 100 KB | UTF-8 emoji | 50 | 4-byte codepoints / g_utf8_validate path |
| L11 | 1 KB | filler | 100 | sanity baseline (re-run, expect L1-equivalent) |
| L12 | mixed | 5 × 1 MB at end | 1000 | pagination memory: last-100 with paste-bombs |
| L13 | 1 MB | filler | 100 | full parse pass on 100 MB file |
| L14 | 100 KB | filler | 1000 | sustained append throughput |
L7 specifically asserts ff_readline rejects oversized lines (returns "",
logs "line too long", continues to next line — the very-next-line is a normal
record, must parse OK).
Export/import pipeline (S7/S8)
Run via make bench-pipeline (default 100k rows) or make bench-pipeline-max
(1M rows). Each subcommand emits a CSV row; full content diff is enforced
on every roundtrip.
| Target | Sub-scenarios | What |
|---|---|---|
bench-export |
S7a_export_cold, S7b_export_dedup |
Seed SQLite N rows → real log_database_export_to_flatfile; second pass measures dedup hot path |
bench-import |
S7_seed_export, S8a_import_cold, S8b_import_idempotent |
Seed → export → wipe DB → real log_database_import_from_flatfile; second import asserts dedup (rows added = 0) |
bench-roundtrip |
S8e_roundtrip |
Seed DB-A → export to flatfile → import to fresh DB-B → full byte-by-byte content diff of every row in (from_jid, to_jid, message, timestamp, type, stanza_id, archive_id, encryption, replace_id) |
bench-pipeline |
all of the above | combined run |
bench-pipeline-max |
same, at 1M rows | heavy: ~3 GB disk, ~5 min |
The bench links the real database_export.c + database_sqlite.c +
database.c so timings reflect actual production code paths (merge sort,
GHashTable dedup, transactional INSERT, etc.).
BENCH_PIPE_ROWS overrides the default row count; BENCH_PIPE_ROWS_MAX
overrides the max-volume default.
The roundtrip CSV note records each phase wall-time:
rows=N seed=Xms export=Yms import=Zms diff=Wms exported=… imported=… mismatches=….
The bench also exposes bench_export_import directly with five subcommands
(seed, export, import, roundtrip, verify) for ad-hoc use:
./tests/bench/bench_export_import seed --rows=1000000 --account=foo@bar
./tests/bench/bench_export_import export --account=foo@bar --csv=out.csv
./tests/bench/bench_export_import roundtrip --rows=100000 --csv=out.csv --full-diff
./tests/bench/bench_export_import verify --db-a=A.db --db-b=B.db
Failure-injection (F1–F15)
Run via make bench-failure. Each test crafts a deliberately corrupt log file
and asserts how the backend handles it. Exits non-zero on any failure.
| ID | Injection | Expected behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| F1 | Last line truncated mid-write + partial appended line | Verify completes; line counted as a parse error or skipped without crash |
| F2 | CRLF line endings on three lines mid-corpus | Verify reports CRLF warning |
| F3 | UTF-8 BOM bytes appearing mid-file (not at start) | Verify reports unparsable line ERROR for that record |
| F7 | LMC cycle: A→B references and B→A references | Verify completes without infinite loop (cycle handled at read-time, not verify) |
| F8 | LMC chain depth 200 (over FF_MAX_LMC_DEPTH=100) |
Verify reports no broken refs (depth-truncation lives at read-time) |
| F9 | Unescaped : inside resource (manual edit) |
Parser splits at first : — body truncated. Not flagged by verify (known parser quirk; documented) |
| F10 | RTL override + zero-width space in resource | Bytes preserved literally, parses fine |
| F11 | Latin-1 byte (0xC9) followed by ASCII | Verify reports invalid-UTF-8 ERROR (parse-line has Latin-1 fallback, but verify doesn't apply it — intentional) |
| F12 | Empty body line | Parses OK, no error |
| F14 | File replaced under us (mtime + inode change) | ff_state_ensure_fresh triggers full rebuild; total_lines updates |
| F15 | Empty file (0 bytes) | Verify reports INFO "empty" |
Latent gaps surfaced:
- F1:
ff_readlinesets*truncated=TRUEbut verify doesn't surface this — partial writes go unflagged. - F9: parser silently truncates body at first unescaped
:— valid manual edits with embedded:are silently corrupted at read-time.
Baseline & regression checking (P4)
# Capture a fresh CSV
make bench-full BENCH_CSV=tests/bench/current.csv
# Compare against baseline.csv (committed)
make bench-compare BENCH_CSV=tests/bench/current.csv
# Once you've reviewed the numbers and they're healthy, snapshot:
make bench-update-baseline BENCH_CSV=tests/bench/current.csv
compare_baseline.py aggregates by (scenario, volume) and uses median across
duplicate rows. Regression threshold defaults to ±25 %; override with
BENCH_THRESHOLD=15. Exit code is 0 on no regressions, 1 if any scenario
exceeds the threshold.
The committed baseline.csv was captured on this hardware (Debian-bookworm
container, NVMe). It's a reference, not absolute — run make bench-full and
compare on your own hardware to track regressions over time.
Generator (gen_history) options
--lines=N total lines (default 10000)
--contacts=K distinct contact JIDs (default 1)
--years=Y year span (default 1)
--seed=S RNG seed (default 42)
--stanza-id={uuid|libpurple|conversations|mixed}
--lmc-rate=PCT 0..50, default 3
--mam-ooo-rate=PCT 0..50, default 0
--resources-per-contact=R default 3
--msg-len-profile={short|mixed|long|extreme}
--output=DIR default /tmp/cproof-bench-corpus
--quiet
Layout produced (matches files_get_data_path("flatlog") + ff_jid_to_dir,
so ff_verify_integrity can walk the tree without changes):
$BENCH_DATA_DIR/
flatlog/
bench_at_bench.example/ # ff_jid_to_dir(--account)
buddy000_at_bench.example/history.log
buddy001_at_bench.example/history.log
...
manifest.txt
Determinism
Same --seed and same --lines etc. → byte-identical corpus. Stanza-ids,
timestamps, body content all derive from xorshift64(seed).
The bench runner does not re-generate the corpus — make bench runs
gen_history once into $BENCH_DATA_DIR, then runs bench_runner on it.
Re-runs reuse the corpus unless you make bench-clean or change BENCH_VOLUME.
Tuning
BENCH_DATA_DIR=/path— override corpus location (default/tmp/cproof-bench-corpus)BENCH_CSV=/path/out.csv— override results CSVBENCH_LOG=1— surface the flatfile backend'slog_*output to stderrBENCH_VOLUME=small|medium|max
Known limitations
- Tail-access is simulated by sparse-index lookup + read-forward, not the
full
_flatfile_get_previous_chat(which is unreachable here without pulling in profanity's xmpp/connection layer). This still measures the expensive parts (state build, index seek, line parse, LMC application). - S6 verify now calls the real
ff_verify_integrityand walks the canonical layout. CSV note format:total=N err=N warn=N info=N. S11 OOO flags ~17 500 timestamp-out-of-order warnings on the 100k/20% corpus. (Resolved as of P2.5.) - S7/S8 export/import wired up in P5 — the bench links real
database_export.c+database_sqlite.c+database.cand driveslog_database_export_to_flatfile/log_database_import_from_flatfileend-to-end. See "Export/import pipeline (S7/S8)" above. - No baseline-comparison script yet (P4).
- F1–F15 failure injection not yet implemented (P3).
Disk-usage warning
Variant corpora can be large because the default mixed length profile
includes a small fraction of paste-bomb (5–100 KB) and extreme (100 KB–1 MB)
messages. Examples:
| Target | Lines | On-disk size | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
bench-quick |
10 000 | ~40 MB | due to ~50 paste-bombs in mixed profile |
bench BENCH_VOLUME=medium |
500 000 | ~2 GB | check df first |
bench BENCH_VOLUME=max |
5 000 000 | ~20 GB | NVMe + plenty of free disk |
bench-multicontact |
1 000 000 (200×5k) | ~4 GB | 200 separate files |
bench-lmc |
100 000 | ~400 MB | single-file |
bench-ooo |
100 000 | ~400 MB | single-file |
bench-pipeline |
100 000 | ~80 MB SQLite + ~50 MB flatfile | export/import |
bench-pipeline-max |
1 000 000 | ~800 MB SQLite + ~500 MB flatfile + ~800 MB DB-B | heavy |
Set BENCH_DATA_DIR if /tmp is too small.
Adding new scenarios
- Add a
run_*function inbench_runner.c. - Wire it into
main()with ascenario_enabled("Sx")check. - Document it in this README + REVIEW.txt Phase 9 plan.
- Run
make bench-full BENCH_CSV=tests/bench/current.csv && make bench-compare— verify no unexpected regressions surface elsewhere.
File map
tests/bench/
├── README.md # this file
├── baseline.csv # committed reference numbers
├── compare_baseline.py # diff current.csv vs baseline.csv
├── gen_history.c # corpus generator (P1 + S9/S10/S11)
├── bench_runner.c # S1–S6 driver
├── bench_long_messages.c # L1–L14 driver
├── bench_failure_modes.c # F1–F15 driver
├── bench_export_import.c # S7/S8 driver (seed/export/import/roundtrip/verify)
├── bench_stubs.c # link-time stubs (log_*, prefs_*, etc.)
├── bench_common.c/.h # timing, RSS, formatting helpers
└── bench_csv.c/.h # CSV-row writer