Best Linux Hardware Diagnostics? 42
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?"
If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
OK, gdb and kdb are the only debuggers I know of - not to say there aren't more but these are the old standards. Take a gander here [kernelhacking.org] for more information. There is too much to go over in a post.
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Why dear god won't they put a real debugger into Linux - it is the only thing missing to make it a world class operating system
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:4, Funny)
"HEY, YOUR HARD DRIVE IS FUCKED!"
That would truly rock. Instead, today you can only sift through "/dev/hda: device not ready" errors in the logs...
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:3, Interesting)
We've been doing data center moves this month, and checking/refurbishing every machine as it gets shipped over. I take any
We have no expectation
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Actually, I have plenty of things to try out on 'em. Sometimes it's nice to have a few dozen old boxen laying around. The power company loves it, and my girlfriend
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:1)
Are you sure you don't want to work for UPS? I'm sure [slashdot.org] some companies pay for better reviews than "was drop-kicked"
(yes, I'd agree with you for every parcel carrier I've used!)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
The Promise VTrak 15100 arrays are very large, heavy, and sturdy boxes. They have very thick plastic handles on the front to ease putting it in the rack (theoretically). In all reality, you can lift them from the floor by the handles, but unless you can manage to hold over 100 pounds horizontally just by the handles, y
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:1)
I actually managed to derive that information from watching a friend's Windows PC boot... was right as well, but people always assume it's a software problem.
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:1)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:2)
Re:If you need to ask.... (Score:1)
my point was that if you use a sniffer you can see the communication on the network itself and where and why it fails. that's more informative than staring at kernels.
Windows programs != Linux Programs (Score:1)
Damn, close. (Score:2)
Re:Damn, close. (Score:1)
Re:Damn, close. (Score:2)
Oh, wait, they do...
A couple of suggestions... (Score:2, Informative)
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 syst
Re:A couple of suggestions... (Score:2)
Re:A couple of suggestions... (Score:2)
Really, I like lilo much better, just as long as you don't do something silly like "lilo ; shutdown -r now". Always make sur
Re:A couple of suggestions... (Score:3, Informative)
Duh. Thats why you do "lilo && shutdown -n now".
Re:A couple of suggestions... (Score:1)
Heard of knoppix? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Windows and lspci. (Score:2)
. And yes, it does this for unknown devices as well. So no more registry digging.
The problem with their "recovery mode" being seriously weaker than the e
Re:Windows and lspci. (Score:1)
And SANDRA would have shown nothing (Score:2, Interesting)
good tools (Score:4, Informative)
cat
lsusb
cat
ls
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.
hard drive monitoring (Score:5, Informative)
UBCD (Score:4, Informative)
Also, Knoppix is another one that I would suggest, though I use it more for data recovery these days.
PC-Check (Score:2)
Best of all, you just slap it in a machine, let it run for an hour, and come back to see the results.
Re:PC-Check (Score:1)
Re:PC-Check (Score:2)
You can also make bootable CDs quite easily from a bootable floppy disk (in Nero anyway). The only downside to a bootable CD is that you can't save and later print the log files.
And few more commands (Score:1)
less
Varioues files under
I prefer less as it gives more options such as MOVING , SEARCHING etc
Also you can write your own custom script to digout information not just from one linux server but from other Linux/BSD servers and email/page back the results.