Patent attributes
A method is provided for validating an inventory of files in a file system of a customer premises equipment (CPE). The method includes developing a database containing a file system inventory of a validated CPE operating in different scenarios or under different operating conditions that may include different networks, different service provider configurations and different end user feature settings. The validated CPE will be allowed to operate in these different scenarios so that an inventory of files and their attributes may be obtained at different times, such as after a reboot, after a change in software feature configurations, and so on. A file system inventory of a CPE system under test is obtained and each entry in the inventory is compared to the entries in the validated file system database to identify unexpected discrepancies.