Linux Stress Testing and Benchmarking

Live CD

Phoronix Test Suite Live – a stripped down linux environment designed around the Phoronix Test Suite

stresslinux – stresslinux is a minimal linux distribution running from a bootable cdrom, usb drive, or via PXE

Monitoring

lm sensors – monitor fans, voltages, and temps

hddtemp – monitor hdd temps

smartmontools – monitor hdd’s using the SMART system built into the hard drive

Benchmark Suites

Phoronix Test Suite – comprehensive testing and benchmarking suite

freebench – free memory, integer, and floating point benchmark

lmbench – portable benchmark suite

ltp – the Linux Test Project benchmark suite

nbench – BYTE Magazine’s BYTEmark tests memory, integer, and floating point performance

xfbsuite – benchmark suite for X

CPU tests

Code:

# time make

when it is done, it will display the overall time it took to complete, which you can then throw in to a text document or spreadsheet to graph, if you’d like.

CPUBurn – stress the cpu

gamut – loopable benchmark app (formerly Sstress)

Mersenne Prime (GIMPS) – Includes a stress test which is identical to it’s Windows counterpart

super pi – calculates pi, same as it’s windows counterpart

stress – places a configurable load on different parts of the system: CPU, memory, I/O, and disk stress

System Stability Tester – gui pi calculating program

Memory Tests

Memtest86+ – can be added to your LILO or GRUB boot menu, so you do not need to have a floppy disk

Graphics Tests

SPECviewperf 9 (32bit and 64bit)

Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 – You can use fly-by’s and botmatches to benchmark

Doom3 – you can use timedemo’s to benchmark

Filesystem I/O

Bonnie – Performance test of filesystem I/O using standard C library calls.

Bonnie++ – Filesystem I/O tester

dbench – filesystem benchmark

iozone – filesystem benchmark

piozone – filesystem benchmark

tiozone – fully threaded filesystem benchmark

Network Tests

netio – network benchmark

nepim – network test

netperf – network test

iperf – network test

Program Benchmarks

bootchart – benchmark your boot process

contest – benchmark different kernels to see which performs best on your system

httperf – HP tool to test webserver performance

jmeter – benchmark the performance of http/ftp services and databases

MySQL Super-Smack – MySQL benchmark

pipebench – measures stdin/stdout communication

siege – http performance test

volanomark – java server benchmark

Articles and HOWTO’s

Linux Overclocking Software (Phoronix)