HON95-wiki/config/general/computer-testing.md

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title: Computer Testing breadcrumbs:

• title: Configuration
• title: General --- {% include header.md %}

Information Gathering

Linux

• Show CPU vulnerabilities: tail -n +1 /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*

CPU

Prime95

• For stress testing.
• For most OSes.
• Install: Download.

RAM

MemTest86 (Standalone)

• Runs multiple tests and passes over (almost) all the memory to test for errors.
• Useful for testing bad DIMMs and overclocking stability.
• Install: Download
  • Use v4 for systems without UEFI support.
• Not the same as "Memtest86+". Memtest86+ is an old fork of Memtest86.

stress-ng (Linux)

• Among other usages, it can test a part of the memory (since the OS is running it obviously can't use everything).
• Useful for quickly finding severe memory errors without e.g. rebooting into MemTest.

Example usage:

# 1 stressor, 75% of memory, with verification, for 10 minutes
stress-ng --vm 1 --vm-bytes 75% --vm-method all --verify -t 10m -v

Storage

Fio (Linux)

• "Flexible I/O tester".
• For file-based disk benchmarking.
• Install (Debian): apt install fio
• Usage:
  • Add --fsync=1 for synchronous IO.
  • Add --time_based --runtime=<seconds> to repeat the test for the provided duration.
  • Configuration arguments may be placed in a config file instead, specified as a positional argument to fio.
  • Note that write performance may sharply degrade after a while when the hardware write cache(s) fill up, so make sure the tests are run for long enough.
  • Examples: See below.

Examples usage:

# Sequential, asynchronous, 4kiB, random write
fio --name=random-write --ioengine=posixaio --rw=randwrite --bs=4k --size=4G --numjobs=1 --iodepth=1 --runtime=60 --time_based --end_fsync=1

# 16 parallel, asynchronous, 64kiB, random write
fio --name=random-write --ioengine=posixaio --rw=randwrite --bs=64k --size=256M --numjobs=16 --iodepth=16 --runtime=60 --time_based --end_fsync=1

# Sequential, asynchronous, 1MiB, random write
fio --name=random-write --ioengine=posixaio --rw=randwrite --bs=1m --size=16G --numjobs=1 --iodepth=1 --runtime=60 --time_based --end_fsync=1

smartmontools (Linux)

• For health testing.
• See smartmontools.

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