From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 3 08:42:35 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 807A116A41F for ; Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:42:35 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (dsl231-043-140.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [216.231.43.140]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ABD5643D4C for ; Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:42:32 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by tao.thought.org (8.13.4/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k038gPfe043489; Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:42:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: (from kline@localhost) by tao.thought.org (8.13.4/8.13.1/Submit) id k038gNs1043488; Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:42:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:42:23 -0800 From: Gary Kline To: James Long Message-ID: <20060103084223.GA43443@thought.org> References: <20060102105418.EA25316A433@hub.freebsd.org> <20060102180652.GA81087@ns.museum.rain.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060102180652.GA81087@ns.museum.rain.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: Observing 19 years of service to the Unix community Cc: Gary Kline , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: STressing a new server... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 08:42:35 -0000 On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 10:06:52AM -0800, James Long wrote: > A buildworld is indeed an excellent test of memory, CPU, drives > and cabling. > > The memory tester is sysutils/memtest. > > It's not a very scientific test, but one thing I do is a > make -j8 buildworld whilst I do a large tar operation, > optionally with compression. Just anecdotally it appears > that tar likes to use lots of memory. I usually do some > sort of file system move, ala: > > tar jcf - original | tar xpvf - -C copy > > Make sure you have enough disk space to burn. > > This has caught dodgy memory on servers in the past. > > Thanks for the tar pointer. Got to copy over /home here to the new box and run several into /usr/tmp. Thanks to everybody for ideas. I don't want to stress things until something *melts*... but some reasonably hard use. I'm using three or four benchmarks, and a couple of my own tests. xload and top show that the results are a fair simulation of real-world use. Should know by the 22nd! gary -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public service Unix