[TAG] (forw) Re: [conspire] One way to test system RAM

[Mulyadi Santosa]

Dear Sleepless Gang ;)
> And a follow-up, since some readers may not have understood the point of
> that console session transcript.
>   
Just wanna add something to this stress test using kernel compilation. 
Before you issue make -j <n>, it would be a better a idea to do:
$ make allyesconfig

This way, you'll make sure you are enabling all kernel configurations. 
If it is a multiple choice configuration item, Makefile will pick the 
default preferred configuration for you. This will make stress testing 
longer and consumes even more larger RAM portion (taken as page cache 
and compiler's stack & heap)

You could also add V=1 to make kernel compilation more verbose:
make V=1 -j <n>
It will make Makefile produces lots of screen's output and surely put 
another area of stress.

Still not satisfied? Open an xterm session or just logon to another 
virtual console. Do this:
$ while : ; done tail -f /dev/zero; done
It is another memory eater that will repeatedly make your kernel engages 
so-called OOM (Out Of Memory) Killer. Short story, it will exhaust your 
memory even faster. But IMHO, you only need to do this if you have a 
real plenty of RAM, let's say 4GB or more.


Just sharing my thoughts..... hope it is useful.

regards,

Mulyadi