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Best Linux Hardware Diagnostics?

Posted by Cliff on from the stress-it-until-it-breaks dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been running Linux for a little while and usually hardware problems have shown up quite easily - kernel panic, no module, no networking, etc. - but recently I've encountered some problems with network disk access causing very high load, which I think might be hardware related. Under Windows I'd fire up SANDRA or the like and run a full system scan. I did a quick search and nothing really stood out. I was wondering if any Linux gurus out there would like to share their expertise on Linux diagnostics?"

6 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. A couple of suggestions... by jschmerge · · Score: 2, Informative

    /var/log/messages or dmesg

    Both should display kernel messages from boot-up. Kernel boot messages usually contain the information you need to track down IRQ conflicts.

    MemTest86

    Not really a Linux program, but something I usually stick as a boot option in grub. Does a great job at detecting bad Ram. MemTest86 can also be booted from a floppy.

    BadBlocks

    This utility can be used to find bad blocks on a disk partition. I've used it before to check disks.

    You might also want to check out some system monitoring utility like Gkrealm, since that gives a generally complete picture IRQ/Interupt usage, Bandwidth utilization, memory and cpu utilization.

    I don't think I've ever had a hardware problem that couldn't be diagnosed using the aforementioned utilities.

    1. Re:A couple of suggestions... by threephaseboy · · Score: 2, Informative
      Really, I like lilo much better, just as long as you don't do something silly like "lilo ; shutdown -r now". Always make sure it kicked back a friendly message. :)

      Duh. Thats why you do "lilo && shutdown -n now".
      --
      .
  2. Heard of knoppix? by mnmn · · Score: 4, Informative

    We keep knoppix CDs just for this purpose; hardware diagnostics. dmesg and the /var/log/messages provide information that is otherwise hard to obtain from Windows 2000 or XP, especially if you cant boot the windows.

    Another crucial thing is lspci, which is absent from windows. Say you do a fresh install of windows, which does not detect the network card. How do you know what card is it to obtain the drivers for? In windows you just cant so easily get the PCI information. Enter knoppix.

    I have also used memtest in knoppix and found memory issues before, where windows simply acted up. The problem with windows is you have to boot the entire OS and take ~130MB of Ram and resolve all IRQs before you can run Sandra or the likes. Memory issues, disk issues or IRQ issues will prevent you from booting even.

    Knoppix when booted in single-user mode takes little memory, and you can boot it not to use ACPI, not to use HLT instruction, not to detect SCSI that might freeze the system etc. Then you can diagnose the system. Just get a CD and read the man pages of various tools on the CD.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  3. good tools by krakrjak · · Score: 4, Informative

    lspci
    cat /proc/cpuinfo
    lsusb
    cat /proc/scsi/scsi
    ls /dev (if using udev)
    dmesg|less (or more depending on your PAGER)
    free

    These usually are enough to determine if BIOS thinks your hardware exists. And also this should help determine if the kernel has loaded a driver and given a device node to your hardware. If you need to know if a harddrive is bad (or partition) you can use the old standby:
    dd if=/dev/ of=/dev/null

    That will tell you if you can read all the data on the device or not. Hope that helps.

  4. hard drive monitoring by runswithd6s · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to add this to the suggested list of applications: smartmontools control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T. lmbench Utilities to benchmark UNIX systems memtest86 Test your memory on x86 platforms nictools-nopci Diagnostic tools for many non-PCI ethernet cards nictools-pci Diagnostic tools for many PCI ethernet cards lm-sensors utilities to read temperature/voltage/fan sensors mbmon Hardware monitoring without kernel dependencies (text client) sensord hardware sensor information logging daemon crashme Stress tests operating system stability fuzz stress-test programs by giving them random input spew I/O performance measurement and load generation tool stress A tool to impose load on and stress test a computer system cpuburn a collection of programs to put heavy load on CPU ltp The Linux Test Project test suite

    --
    assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
  5. UBCD by Jsutton1027w · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Ultimate Boot CD: It's basically a compilation of different boot disks, all put in a nice menu system on a freely-downloadable ISO image. While it's not really Linux (though it contains a number of Linux-based boot disks), it is one of the best utility CD's that I've ever encountered for testing hardware.

    Also, Knoppix is another one that I would suggest, though I use it more for data recovery these days. ;)