Integration of stress

Message

holgrrr · #1 Post by **holgrrr** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:04 am

Hi there!

First of all: great work!
I stumbled upon UBCD several years ago and still love using it!

The main point is, that I found a nice tool for stress-testing a complete system:

Stress
From http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/stress/
stress is a simple tool that imposes a configurable amount of CPU, memory, I/O, and disk stress on POSIX-compliant operating systems. It is written in portable ANSI C and uses the GNU Autotools to compile on most UNIX-like operating systems. It is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL.

The company I'm currently working for is using this tool for stress-testing hardware before shipping, as it this tool imposes load an the whole system and not just the CPU.

Is there a possibility that this tool will be included in one of the next UBCD releases?

Best wishes,
Holger

Constance · #2 Post by **Constance** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:09 am

Well if it is free and since, as far as I know, there are not already tools that do the same thing, I don't see why it would not be added sooner or later

#3 Post by **Victor Chew** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 3:12 am

Since this is a Unix app, it would be best if someone could supply me with a boot disk containing the app, or better still, integrate it into Adrian's Linux boot disk that already contains mprime and stresscpu.

holgrrr · #4 Post by **holgrrr** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 4:10 am

I'd be willing to take the integration work!

As I'm not involved in your "workflow", how would this have to work out?

I'd prefer an integration in Adrian's disk, as stress should *imho* work well with his disk.

Am I to contact him?

All the best,
Holger

#5 Post by **Victor Chew** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 5:15 am

I think you should just work on the existing image and email it to me.

Adrian's got a new job and is real busy, so I don't think he will be able to get involved.

holgrrr · #6 Post by **holgrrr** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:26 am

Work is done - the whole thing is currently "burning" a laptop sitting next to me

Steps I've taken:

I had to create a new image, as Adrian's had not enough space left to include stress.

Well, the new image is basically just the same as the old, besides that it is 500kb larger and now contains stress, sitting in /usr/bin, just like the rest of the burn-in-tools.

Modified linuxrc
It just includes one more case (stress) for starting "stress".

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stress)
	echo "Starting /usr/bin/stress"
	/usr/bin/stress --help
	echo "Please start /usr/bin/stress with appropriate settings"
	;;

Attention:
stress does not come up with a burn-in-test itself, but with the help-menu - that's the --help parameter!

It hast to be started manually, as there are different parameters (cpu/io/...) to chose from - I did not want to be the one in charge for deciding which combination is the best stress-test

Another thing I noticed when modifying linuxrc, was a call to cpuburn-in after the closing esac in the linuxrc-script:

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/cpuburn-in 10080

I commented it out, as it looks like a legacy line from a much older version of this script.

The correct menu.lst entry for grub is - new image is named scburn.gz at the moment - but feel free to change this:

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title stress - a system burn-in test
   kernel /dists/ubcd/boot/cpustres ubcd=stress ramdisk_size=9000
   initrd /boot/scburn.gz

Corresponding isolinux-entry:

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LABEL stress
  MENU LABEL stress - a system burn-in test
        KERNEL /boot/cpustres
        APPEND initrd=/boot/scburn.gz ubcd=stress ramdisk_size=9000

One last thing:
I stumbled across a bug while booting some of the stuff in the old cpustres-image.

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attemp to access beyond end of device
01:00: rw=0, want=8406, limit=4096
...

This only occured with two out of four test setups.

This was fixable by using the following boot-options:

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"ramdisk_size=8500"

in the old and

Code: Select all

"ramdisk_size=9000"

in the new image - you can also see this in the menu.lst-enty or the isolinux-entry.

Well, that's it for now

Victor: I'll send you the new image in some minutes, after I got me some fresh coffee

I'd be glad if you could give me some feedback if the stuff is "okay" so far and if it will be included in one of the next releases.

Best wishes,
Holger