testing a new machine, memory test, etc

[pocock]

What burn-in test routines do people use when making a new machine or modifying the machine substantially?

For example, on x86 machines, I frequently run memtest86 from a USB stick before installing the OS.  It is not available for OpenPOWER.  It would be really useful to have something like this accessible in petitboot.

[MPC7500]

I never tried myself, but memtester should work.

[pocock]

Yes, I had decided to try that but it is not perfect

memtester can't test 100% of the memory because some of the memory is always occupied by the operating system and memtester runs as an application in user space

It also requires you to spend time installing the OS before you can run the test.  The ideal scenario is that you run the test before spending time on installation.

[FlyingBlackbird]

What burn-in test routines do people use when making a new machine or modifying the machine substantially?
essible in petitboot.

I personally love the `stress-ng` tool (you can vary the args as needed):

Code: [Select]

# CPU, sync and memory load simultanously:
sudo stress --cpu 4 --io 3 --vm 2 --vm-bytes 256M --timeout 20s

stress-ng – is an updated version of the stress workload generator tool which tests your
system for following features:

1. CPU compute
2. drive stress
3. I/O syncs
4. Pipe I/O
5. cache thrashing
6. VM stress
7. socket stressing
8. process creation and termination
9. context switching properties

# https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/stress-ng
# https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/stress-test-linux-unix-server-with-stress-ng/

# sudo apt install stress
# sudo apt install stress-ng

# use stress-ng instead of stress for a newer stress test

sudo stress --cpu 32

# to messure the avg load use
uptime
sudo stress --cpu 32 --timeout 60s
uptime

# use -v for verbose output

# Memory/RAM:
# Watch out: Will swap if vm-bytes >= RAM size (very slow)
# "verify" also checks if the memory can be read
sudo stress-ng --vm 1 --vm-bytes 64G --timeout 90s --verify -v --metrics-brief

# Should I run stess-ng with root access?
# Running stress-ng with root privileges will adjust out of memory settings on Linux systems to make the stressors unkillable
# in low memory situations, so use this judiciously.
# -> may be required to test the RAM completely

[ClassicHasClass]

Seems like a statically-built testing binary you could indeed run from the Petitboot shell would be feasible.