[CentOS] how can I stress a server?

Tue Nov 18 09:25:31 UTC 2008
Rudi Ahlers <rudiahlers at gmail.com>

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:24 AM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote:
> Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>>
>> John, just cause the machines we use to serve web content to our
>> clients doesn't use the grade of equipment you prefer to use, and can
>> afford, doesn't mean equipment that other people use is inferior, or
>> worthless.
>>
>>
>
> ECC memory would have caught any memory errors, (including memory timing),
> and give a diagnostic and we wouldn't be having this conversation, this
> system would be in production, and you'd be working on the next customers
> job.
>
>
> oh yeah, those 'server' motherboards generally use registered/buffered
> memory, which can handle higher memory fanouts and support a full load of
> memory banks robustly.
>
>
>
> I meant to suggest the other night, go into the Intel BIOS, find the memory
> settings area, and set it to custom timings, and add a clock to each of the
> timings, like if its 4-4-4-12, try 5-5-5-15 (or whatever the next increment
> is).     running 8GB on a desktop board, I'm guessing you have all slots
> full, this increseas the capacitive load on the address and data bus, and
> makes marginal timing more marginal.
>
>
> _______________________________________________


John, I know what ECC does. I have 2 Dell PE860 servers with 8GB ECC
DDRII RAM as well, and they're both giving RAM problems. I had top
swap-out the RAM 2 times with the suppliers already, and swapped out a
motherboard on the one of the servers. Honestly, ECC isn't my
favourate to use.

At the same time, I have about 8 servers with cheap Gigabyte
motherboards and non-ECC RAM, which have been running for close to 4
years now, without any hickups at all.

It's the first time I try the Intel board, since it's supposed to be a
step-up from the desktop boards, and has 4 memory slots as apposed to
only 2.


The server had the same problems when I only had 4GBM RAM (2 slots
used & 2 slots open), so I don't think that the capacitive load is the
problem here. Right now the server is still at the datacentre - which
is 2 hours drive there & back with traffic, so I'm going to get it
later today / tonight, as soon as I've moved all the data across to
the slower gigabyte server, and then I can try the RAM timings thing
in the BIOS.

But, how can I put a LOT of load onto it, and see what's causing the
problem? For all I know, the motherboard could be faulty, or the CPU,
or maybe even the SATA bus?


-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers