Ric Wheeler wrote:
Just thinking out loud, but it would be really helpful to get drive
vendor's a basic set of tests for Linux systems - error handling,
performance, SMART features, etc - that would run natively on linux.
We would need to get something really easy to deploy, like a live CD
image with the test suite that could be booted on a pc, to get into an
environment that is used to booting DOS based floppies...
Strongly agreed.
I know some people use DOS-based environments; I would prefer the
following test environment:
Equip systems with NICs that can do wake-on-lan and PXE. To initiate
testing of a system, perform a PXE boot, which downloads a
custom-compiled kernel and initrd over the net. The kernel boots, sets
up a test environment in either ramfs or nfs (or a combination thereof),
and runs a "do everything" script which starts the tests specified by
the network admin.
The tests performed should be in three classes: (1) data and non-data
tests performed over a "direct submit" interface like SG_IO, (2) data
tests performed by directly accessing the block device, and (3) data
tests performed by accessing data through a common filesystem [ext3 or
whatever is popular].
It is already trivial to write tests for #2 and #3. Tests in class #1
may require some thought and complexity, such as using multiple threads,
to achieve maximal use of command queueing features. I'm not aware of
any userspace interface that allows fine-grained control of TCQ (Jens
correct me here), or even an interface that does not require multiple
threads to submit multiple tasks simultaneously.
Jeff
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