</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><option>transactionlog</option></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Optional; string</para>
+ <para>
+ If specified, then this pathname is used to generate a transaction
+ log. A transaction log is a binary file consisting of the requests
+ sent to and the replies received by the server, but excluding any
+ data (so, for a write command, it records the offset and length
+ of the write but not the data written). It is therefore relatively
+ safe to distribute to a third party. Note that the transaction log
+ does not include the negotiation sequence. Transaction logs are
+ mainly useful for debugging. The program
+ <emphasis>nbd-tester-client</emphasis> distributed with the source
+ to this program can reply a transaction log against a server and
+ perform a data integrity test. Note that the transaction log is
+ written to for every client opened. If it is necessary to maintain
+ separate transaction logs for each client, the
+ <emphasis>prerun</emphasis> script should rename the transaction log
+ (which will just have been opened in order to avoid transaction logs
+ overwriting eachother. This action should be race-free.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</refsect1>