I have just 'acquired' an old box of unknown quality and installed Slackware current on it. The install had some problems with package errors but all is now well ( I think the DVD ROM drive may be a bit dicky).

I run current on another box on my lan and am fluent with installs/setup/useage.

The thing is - this box was being thrown away by someone as it was supposedly busted beyond repair. When I cracked it open it looked like a repairer had tried to fix it but got the jumpers wrong on the hard disk. Believe it or not I don't know the person who previously owned the box so there's no way of getting it's problem history.

Are there any 'burn in' tests that I can set running to test the hardware - (Linux based)? (I have managed to get Slackware current running on the thing).

In particular I'm thinking of 'burn' testing the whole system - disk,ram,video etc. I already suspect the DVD rom is faulty but in my experience these can be the first components to go and a lot of end users throw away an otherwise perfectly good system because the optical drive is playing up.

So far I have ran various tests both via ssh from another machine on my net whilst ping flooding it and locally (e.g. running dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null (hopefully stressing hda)). Then spawning 1000 http requests from another lan connected box. ( I have enabled httpd on the target machine).

Basically I am inventing these tests as I go along to try and stress test the hardware. Are there any apps that will do this for me or anyone have any ideas - (clever scripts maybe, etc) ?

Thanks in advance - who knows, maybe I've got something for nothing !!)

p.s. Please don't suggest compiling Open Office or something as I am not immortal !! And yes I know of memtest but ideally there may be a suite of tests I can run ??

I had some flaky problems with my new system and found it to be a memory error (SUSE rpms were downloading and reporting corrupt, random slow-downs, and frequent beeps)
I ran memtest86 that comes on kubuntu cds and installs to the hdd as a boot option, and it kept reporting errors - basically it cycles various patterns in your ram and checks the values. it does a good job of checking the ram and does not touch the rest of your system
Have a look to see if your distro provides it, otherwise you can downlaod from:
http://www.memtest86.com/

For other systems - we do use the 'Ultimate Boot CD' but I do not have link - one of the guys found it for me...

For testing memory I prefer memtest86+, and for your hard drive,
motherboard, and controller check out SeaTools for DOS

For stressing the cpu this is highly recommended:
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

Thanks for the replies - some interesting options there.

So far so good with the testing anyway.

Thanks again..

Hi,
The 'UBCD Ultimate Boot CD' link.

I just looked at the UBCD - wow I never knew it did all that
- I thought it was just a recovery disk !!

Looks like just what I need I'll be downlading it to try later.

Thanks a lot...

Hi,

Give us some feedback as to your experience with 'UBCD'.

The download went OK and the disk burnt OK - it's a reasonably small iso - I downloaded a zip of 95Mb which expands to about 115Mb.

The disk boots very quickly into a menu offering tests,diagnostics, utilities and Dos or Linux shells.

I have been working through the tests and so far everything has passed OK. Some of the tests seem to require a reboot which is a bit of a pain. In any case I cannot get back to the main menu having ran a test but this may be me missing something as it's early days yet.

The disk test are interesting - some will only work with their branded disks (i.e. Fujitsu test looks for a Fujitsu disk) but others are brand agnostic and work with any disk.

The CPU test are interesting and there is a 'burn in' test which runs for 7 days !! Needless to say I haven't ran this !!

On the whole it seems a useful tool - I just need to figure out how to rerun the launch menu. However I have only been playing for about an evening so we will see.

I once installed Gentoo (from Stage1) on my 'trusty' AMD K6 system.

Attempt 1: The CPU overheated due a gummed-up fan. -> Resolution: Clean and lube CPU fan.
Attempt 2: A bad spot in upper RAM became apparent. -> Resolution: Replace bad memory module.
Attempt 3: The hard disk make a horrible "clang" and the system froze. -> Resolution: Replace HDD.
Attempt 4: All went well and its been running fine ever since.

Conclusion: Installing source-based Linux is a good way to reveal marginal hardware while learning at the same time.

Yes this seems to be the case. The Ultimate Boot CD is just a collection of independent applications with a nice menu. The applications do not really know they are running from a menu, and generally expect a reboot back into your OS.

Still very useful

So it's not just me then !

Anyway - just as a comparison I thought I run some benchmarks on my main machine - core 2 duo with Sata disks.

The UBCD hard locks on boot up requiring a power cycle. Not sure why but disappointed nevertheless.

Hi,

That's why the menu is not re-entrant. The programs were floppy based.