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Suggest LIVE Bootable USB/CD for benchmarking
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Suggest LIVE Bootable USB/CD for benchmarking

Hi all,

I'll be needing a quick handy live USB distro/pkg to be able to test hardware and benchmark hard disk, RAM, CPU and Power Supply (if possible) and See if there are any hardware related issues. Will need to test around 70 Used Workstation/PCs.

Please pour over your suggestions... for a reliable source.
Thanks

Comments

  • Maybe puppy

    Thanked by 1mehargags
  • mehargagsmehargags Member
    edited January 2017

    Not sure of Puppy, isn't it just a tiny linux distro only ? Can't find anything specific to benchmark or Hardware Diagnostics.

    Found 2 for the moment which I'm checking:

    1. UltimateBootCD(UBCD)

    2. StressLinuxdoesn't seem to be updated since 2015

    any more recommendations ?

  • WSSWSS Member

    Puppy is perfect for this, actually. You're still going to want your standard ATX/load tester for the PSU, and a general hardware knowledge, but it'll do just fine.

  • IkoulaIkoula Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2017

    Hello,

    Maybe you could add some tools on a system rescue cd?

  • @Ikoula said:

    I don't mean to be mean, honestly, but if someone needs to ask the question above chances are that his next thread will be "how do I add tools to system rescue cd?".

    That's why I suggested puppy. It's relatively small and does the job and it's considered to be friendy and easy.

  • mehargagsmehargags Member
    edited January 2017

    Puppy confuses me for the options here...http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WhatpuppyLinuxisbestforyou and then here http://puppylinux.org/main/Download Latest Release.htm#slackopuppy

    The hardware to be tested is a mix of old (5-6 years) and not so old (1.5-2 years), some workstations, some server hardware. Help me choose the best for my job ?

    UltimateBootCD (UBCD) is absolutely the thing I want... spot on! Have used this before but wanted more opinion from members here.

    Thanks for the suggestions

  • puppy is available in 2 basic flavours, slack and ubuntu. It's simple, easy, and quite reliable.

    ultimate boot, system rescue and others are more on the "rescue a system" side any one may find them easy or not.

    Maybe the best would be to install just pretty any linux distro you happen to know and to like. Most distros (or at least the ones they're based on) offer some kind of (more or less) minimal flavour live cd image.

    Looking at the number of system you'll have to work on you'll end up scripting some basic test and info gathering anyway and I'd guess that any linux life system can handle that.
    puppy just happens to be small, to run from RAM (desirable in that kind of situation), and easy.

    Thanked by 1mehargags
  • @mehargags - since you are planning on running this is on 70 systems (or thereabouts), I assume you don't want to manually do this.

    If you want some "automation", I'd go with what @Ikoula said ( @bsdguy has a point but I think it is worth it considering you are testing 70 or so systems and it'll save you a tonne of time in the long run ) - customize system rescue cd and put in a couple of hand made bash scripts that do what you want. Mostly the tools you need should already be there (hdparm, stress, memtest etc.) and you may only need a caller-watcher-killer script. This way, you pop the cd/usb, boot the machine and it auto starts to your custom script which does whatever.

    I think nothing beats memtest (directly booted) for a memory test (let it run for some passes and if all is well reboot the machine into the OS).

    For disk testing/wiping, dd or dcfldd (similar to dd with extra output etc.) is great.

    As to power supply testing - I have no clue (other than just constantly stressing the system to see if things crash/freeze) - so please provide any updates/inputs if anyone has ideas.

    My $0.02.

    Thanked by 1Ikoula
  • Thanks alot @bsdguy and @nullnothere

    Yes, I'll look into putting up a script that fires the desired basic tests, however I would not rush it as the testing needs to be done over a week and in detail, so some manual observation is a must.

  • Additional hint: You might want to set up a small website on a LAN server to which your script can send it's results.
    That way you could have a centralized nice little results/detail database and could at the same time spare yourself from having a writeable partition and how to name and store each machines data/test results.

    Later that little db could also server diverse other purposes such as static dhcp and many others. Just a suggestion you might want to consider.

  • Adding to @bsdguy's note on the webserver (for intranet/LAN stuff), it may also make sense to just have each machine boot, download a fixed/hardcoded script from the said webserver which then does whatever you want (including downloading additional packages etc.) - this way you can dynamically keep changing your test script without having to rebuild sysrescuecd for each change.

    You'll have a nice centralized server to control the testing and also save the results.

    Now if only doing something like this was reasonably practical for all of my hard-ly working VPSs... :-)

  • mehargagsmehargags Member
    edited January 2017

    @bsdguy and @nullnothere,
    suggestion is welcome... and is great, however there is no internet facility at the yard. Setting up a LAN is also a problem because machines are distributed in 3 different yards!!

    Infact this hints me to boot up minimal and run a test http://serverscope.io/ test run, ofcourse if I can have the internet. Will try and get a 4G router if possible.

  • Any laptop or even a raspberry toy will do. On a halfway modern laptop you'll even have Auto MDI and can use a standard ethernet cable to link the proband machine to your laptop "server".

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