Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!chi-news.cic.net!news.math.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: Make World Question???? Date: 20 May 1996 15:49:49 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 36 Message-ID: <4nq4at$4c9@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <4nm65c$4tj@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Raymond Irwin <RIrwin@worldnet.att.net> wrote: > I read in the last issue of BYTE, in the letters section that FreeBSD has > a "make world" command that "tests hardware to its fullest capability". I > assume that "make world" compiles and tests all drivers. Anyway--I am > looking for a good hardware testing program for servers that will be > loaded with SCO and NT (intx86). We have no experience with BSD, and > would not consider moving to the platform as being a VAR, our customers > pretty much dictate the platform. My question then, how vigourous is the > "make world"? What is it exactly? Could it be used to reliable test > hardware for the platforms above? THNX IN ADV. ``make world'' is rebuilding the entire source tree, not just a few drivers or so. Remember, a Unix system is quite more than a kernel only. ``make world'' tries to be paranoid, and compiles some of the sources two or three times (since it has first to compile and install include and library files, and then has to recompile everything from scratch). It proved to be a fine hardware test for various reasons. The compiler (and make) usually consume a large amount of VM and thus stress the RAM and Cache. The numerous files involved stress the storage subsystem as well. Compiling does also require much CPU time. All this leads to a procedure that is known to quickly show you hardware problems in the mentioned areas. Of course, this hasn't been designed as a hardware test program, and it cannot claim to be exhaustive. It's unlikely to find problems with your floppy controller, or with your UART (unless you've got /usr/src NFS-mounted across SLIP :-). Anyway, it proved to be a good ``real- life'' test. -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j